Things Fall Apart
by ICanStopAnytime
Summary: Daryl Dixon is a murder suspect. Carol Peletier is keeping secrets from her husband. At the onset of the zombie apocalypse, they're going to have to wind their separate ways to the quarry camp. [Carol, Ed, Sophia, Merle, Daryl, T-Dog.]
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** This pre-series story is an expanded rewrite of "Cleaning Up Will Dixon's Mess," which has been removed from the archives. It adds scenes from Carol's perspective that were not included in that story, and it also makes some changes to Daryl's backstory.

[*]

 **" _Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;_ _  
_ _Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…"_** **\- Yeats**

[*]

Will Dixon lay face down in a pool of his own vomit. Empty cans and bottles oozed their last drops of beer into the rough wood floor. The tit-shaped ashtray had been knocked off the end table, scattering dry cigarette butts everywhere. "Always knew he'd drink himself to death," Daryl muttered.

"Didn't drink himself to death, dumbass!" Merle pointed to the dark clot in their father's graying brown hair.

Daryl squatted down on his haunches and noticed, for the first time, the gunshot wound.

"Suicide?" Merle asked.

"In the back of the head? Who's the dumbass now?" Daryl drew himself into a standing position. He swatted a fly off one of his bare, muscular shoulder, just below the jagged edge of his cut-off shirt.

Their cousin Billy Ray had called them last night to tell them, "I think your daddy's on another bender. Gave him a job at the bar, but he ain't shown up the last few days. Might want to check in on him."

"Smells," Merle observed.

"Smells like two days," Daryl agreed. "Maybe three." He'd learned a bit about dead bodies working for the county mortician part-time doing "recoveries." That meant he had to pick up unidentified dead bodies wherever they were found and bring them back to the morgue. But he wasn't doing recoveries anymore. Merle had gotten them a job painting houses in a new cookie-cutter development twenty miles south, and they were living in the work trailer.

"Gotta report this," Merle said. "But we better clean up first."

They started with the moonshine still, which they disassembled and put it in the bed of Merle's pick-up, along with a few ceramic jugs. Next they searched every nook and cranny for drugs. They found some meth, which Merle claimed for himself. Daryl took the five dollars from his father's wallet. They went to his bedroom closet and removed the fake wall and loaded up the weapons.

"I get that crossbow," Daryl said.

"Fine. But I'm takin' the rifles."

Daryl aimed the bow at the poster of the naked woman just above his father's bed and shot her right in her left tit.

Merle laughed. "Not bad, little brother. Gave her a nipple piercing."

Daryl turned the bow back and forth in his hands to examine it. "Damn, the old man made a good decision for once in his life. This un's better than my old one."

"Which handgun ya want?"

Daryl glanced over his shoulder. "Take the Sig."

Merle handed it to him, and Daryl made sure the safety was on before shoving it in the waistband of his pants.

When the truck was loaded up with everything they wanted to keep – or didn't want the cops to find – Merle drove it off and hid it in the woods. Daryl followed on his father's motorcycle and then brought Merle back to the cabin, where they called the cops.

They spent the next hour answering questions they had no answers for. Daryl left Merle behind with the cops to wander off in the woods to take a piss, since they weren't letting him in the house. He ducked under the yellow tape and walked passed the small crowd of neighbors that had gathered around the unraveling scene. When he was returning, and was about to duck under the tape again, he heard a familiar voice: "Well if it ain't Daryl Dixon."

He turned around to see one of the neighbors, Darlene Cox, in a pair of tight, cut-off jean shorts. Her pink halter top clung tightly to her breasts, and her dirty blonde bangs curled over her forehead. He'd known her since he was a kid. She was halfway between his age and Merle's. One hip thrust out, she said, "Long time no see."

Daryl grunted.

"Yer daddy all right?" she nodded to the police tape.

"Dead. Got murdered."

"Sorry to hear that," she said.

"No ya ain't."

"Well, your daddy ain't exactly the best neighbor a girl ever had."

Merle sauntered up and ducked under the police tape. "Well hello there, sugar. Wanna fuck? I got a few minutes."

Darlene rolled her hazel eyes. "I hear you got the clap."

"Anything I may or may not have procured is well treated. C'mon, girl. You know you want to go for a ride on the Merle express." Merle humped the air.

"I'm engaged, Merle."

"Like hell you are."

Darlene held up her ring finger, like she was flicking him off, and a diamond engagement ring glinted in the sunlight.

"Well I'll be damned," Merle said. "Who agreed to marry _you_?"

"You wouldn't know him. He's an _educated_ man. And unlike _you_ , he knows how to romance a girl."

Merle snorted. "Let's be honest, Darlene. Ya ain't exactly the romancin' kind."

Now Darlene did stick up her middle finger.

"Oughtta get back to the police," Daryl said. "Gonna look suspicious talking out here."

"Listen, if the cops ask you any questions," Merle told Darlene, "you don't know shit about shit. You don't know what our daddy owned, what kind of business he was in, nothing. You hear?"

"I _do_ know something, though," she said. "I think I know who killed your daddy."

"Who?" Daryl asked.

"Earl Hayes," she answered.

"Earl Hayes?" Merle scoffed. "Earl Hayes ain't never hurt a fly."

"Earl Hayes is a damn good shot with a .22. It was a .22 rifle that got him, wasn't it?" Darlene asked.

"Yeah," Daryl conceded. "But Earle ain't never even been in a _real_ fight. He sure as hell don't go around _killin'_ people."

"He's gone clear off his rocker, though," she said. "Since last week. Talking 'bout flesh eaters. Sayin' there's some kind of disease. People 'round these here woods, they been getting sick and dying and turning into cannibals. Claims he's seen it happen three times now. Says you got to get the brains." She pointed to her forehead. "Probably thought your daddy was one of 'em."

"Why in the hell would Earl just go insane all the sudden?" Daryl asked.

"I don't know," Darlene said. "And maybe he ain't. I mean...maybe he's _right_."

"What?"

Darlene hugged herself. "Just...I don't know. Thought I saw one once, lurchin' around the woods. I was a little drunk, so I'm not sure."

"A _little_ drunk. Yeah, sure." Daryl shook his head. He ducked under the tape, muttering, "Cannibals my ass."

[*]

"Pelter?" the U.S.P.S. man behind the counter asked. He was a smiling, bald black man whose name tag read _Theodore Douglas._ The name seemed vaguely familiar to Carol, though she didn't know why.

" _Peletier_ ," Carol corrected him. She missed her maiden name. No one had ever messed up Jones.

"Is your husband French?"

"I suppose his ancestors were." Carol had once daydreamed of marrying a French prince when she was a little girl. He would rescue her from a fiery dragon on his majestic steed. Ed had rescued her, she supposed, from loneliness, crippling debt, and an uncertain future. He'd rescued her and then trapped her; saved and then condemned her.

"Oh, your dad used to be the town butcher!" he said. "I know you. We went to elementary school together."

"I doubt that." He looked a full ten years younger than her.

"I was two grades below you. The kids used to call me T-Dog."

Carol _did_ remember him, now that he mentioned it. He was one of only two black kids in her entire school.

"My parents divorced when I was in fifth grade," he said, "and I moved to Atlanta with my mother. I just came back this year. My dad's been sick."

Carol nodded, but she didn't say anything. She'd learned not to make eye contact with other men, or to be too pleasant to them. Ed didn't like it.

"You never moved away though, did you?" Theodore asked.

"No," she answered curtly.

Carol had lived in this small town her entire life. Her parents had both died by her eighteenth birthday, leaving her nothing but a house that was mortgaged to the hilt. College wasn't in her cards. She'd gone to work at the local high school as a secretary and struggled to make the mortgage payments, spending very little money on food and clothing and none on entertainment.

Carol met Ed three years later at – of all places - _church_. He'd moved into town to take a job at the liquor store. That year Carol had to replace the roof on the house after a storm and broke her ankle. Because bad things always come in threes, next, her car broke down, and she couldn't afford the repairs. She couldn't even afford to make her next mortgage payment. Ed offered to give her rides to work. Then he offered to marry her and save the house from foreclosure. She said yes like she was seizing a lifeline.

Ed had been charming back then, young and tall and handsome and hardworking, though perhaps she should have seen all the red flags: he was a high school dropout who had not been in contact with his own family for years. He was fond of beer. He'd gotten jealous anytime she so much as looked at another guy, but she'd been fool enough to find that flattering back then.

The first two years of their marriage weren't bad. Ed got irritated more often than was comfortable, but he didn't start really yelling at her until the third year. He began to cut her off from her friends during the fourth. Then, when he was promoted to manager of the liquor store, he insisted she quit her job. He said he could take care of her, and after all those years of struggling, part of her _wanted_ to be taken care of.

Only then, when she had nothing and no one but Ed, did the hitting begin.

Walking away wasn't as easy as people imagined. She'd tried it once. She'd driven through the night for seventy miles to a shelter she'd read about on a community bulletin board. But after having her wallet stolen, and seeing her daughter Sophia accosted by a crazy woman, she'd crawled back to her husband. Carol had learned to read his moods, to deflect them, and, when she couldn't, to brace herself for the blows.

"So what are you doing these days?" T-Dog asked. "You were always so creative. You used to – "

"- It's box 506," Carol interrupted him.

Ed didn't know about the P.O. box she'd opened. He didn't know about the letters his father sent Sophia. Ed's father had kicked Ed out of the house when he was seventeen. Ed had told her one version of events when they were dating. Ed's father had told her another when he learned he had a granddaughter and reached out to her.

Now, Ed's father wrote Sophia once a week. He'd spoken to her on the phone a few times. It was Sophia and Carol's dirty little secret. Ed could never know.

Sophia's grandfather seemed like a good man, and every time he wrote his granddaughter, often with a $5 bill tucked in the folds of the letter, Carol thought of writing back: "Your son beats me. Help." But she never did. And sometimes Ed would go months without hitting her, as if he'd gotten religion. But then it would always start again.

T-Dog lay the stack of mail on the counter – all junk mail, except the one with a return address in the mountains of northeast Georgia, from Edward Peletier, _**Sr.**_

Carol scooped up the pile and thanked him without meeting his eyes.

[*]

The county sheriff beckoned the Dixon brothers over. The man had graying black hair, a short but grizzly beard, and weary, brown eyes. He appeared to be in his early sixties and looked like he'd lived some life. The little badge atop his pocket read _Sherriff Judge Roy Law_. He looked at the bulge under Daryl's shirt just above his waistband. "Mr. Dixon, do you have a permit to carry that handgun concealed?"

"Now, Sheriff," Merle said, "you and I both know a man don't need a permit to carry concealed on his own private property."

Sheriff Law tipped up his hat. "Except this isn't exactly his property. It's your father's."

"Well, it's ours now," Merle said.

"Is that so?" the sheriff asked. "You stand to inherit everything, do you?"

"We ain't gettin' shit," Merle backtracked. "Bank's gonna take the land and cabin."

Will Dixon had taken out a second loan to rebuild when the old cabin burned down with Daryl's mother in it. The man had been in debt up to his eyeballs. "Our daddy died without a pot to piss in," Daryl said. "Ain't no one killin' him for his inheritance."

"And as for Daryl's gun...C'mon, Sheriff. This here's Georgia." Merle leaned forward confidentially. "You ain't one of them sissy suburban cops. You know damn well every man out here's got a gun on him." He nodded behind the police line, where the neighbors were peering and whispering. "You gonna ask every damn one of them to see a CCL?"

"Let me see your gun," Sheriff Law insisted.

Daryl drew the Sig out and handed it to him butt first.

The sheriff turned to Merle. "Yours too."

Merle sighed, drew his out, and handed it to the Sheriff, who examined them both before handing them off to a deputy. "These guns did not kill your father."

"No shit, Sherlock," Merle replied. "Think we'd be standin' out here with the murder weapon?"

"We're going to hold onto these guns for a bit," Sheriff Law said.

"Why?" Merle asked.

"Because I don't want y'all armed when we take you into the station."

"What we need to go to the station for?" Daryl asked. "We done answered all yer questions."

"Because," Sheriff Law said, "we're going to examine you from head to toe for bite marks. We found human flesh in your father's teeth."


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** _To the guest who asked, the changes to Daryl's backstory are minor - mostly tightening up his story (and maybe adding an extra line or two about his family background, but nothing major). The major changes are that I added entirely new scenes from Carol's POV. I'm happy some people are reading this for the very first time, too! Comments welcome. Feedback is the fuel of fanfic writers._

[*]

Carol gave the car a little gas and tried again. This time the engine caught. The two-door sedan was twelve years old, and one day it would just stop running, but Ed said she was lucky he "allowed" her a car at all.

He allowed it because she needed to do the grocery shopping and run his errands and sometimes pick up Sophia from school when it was raining too hard for the girl to walk home. They could have bought her a safer car if Ed hadn't spent $950 buying all those stupid MREs for that Y2K catastrophe that never happened.

Carol had never believed that nonsense. It seemed about as realistic as a monster apocalypse. Really, planes falling out of the sky because a computer read the year wrong? Those MREs were still stacked tightly on the bottom two shelves of the pantry. They would never eat those, unless Ed forced them to.

She popped the car into drive and reached over to feel the food in the pack on the front seat. It was warm. Mr. Wilson would love the luncheon she'd made him today, and she'd get to have pleasant conversation with another adult, someone other than Ed, someone who liked her and thought well of her. Mr. Wilson was a charming man, even if he was eighty-seven.

Ed told her she should stop volunteering to deliver meals to shut-ins, that she had plenty of cooking to do in their own house, but he didn't know what she did while Sophia was in school and he was at work. As long as he had a hot meal on the table when he got home, she didn't get the back of his hand.

She felt a guilty thrill as she made her way to the four-story apartment complex on the edge of their small town, as if she was having some kind of sultry, illicit affair.

[*]

"Ooooh...weee!" Merle said when the back door of the patrol car slammed shut. "The po-po got us now. This gonna be an adventure, little brother!"

"Gettin' tired of yer adventures," Daryl muttered.

Sheriff Law said nothing as he started the car. He didn't turn on the siren as he pulled away from Will Dixon's cabin, crunching over dirt and sticks and rocks. Daryl hid his nervousness with a scowl as the car dipped into and out of a hole in the windy dirt road that led down the side of the mountain to the town below.

Merle leaned over and whispered, "They gonna separate us. Remember everything I taught you. And don't say anything stupid, dumbass."

Daryl stared straight ahead through the glass partition at the back of Sheriff Law's thick mane of hair. A voice crackled over the radio: "Harrison Memorial Hospital is requesting a unit for crowd control."

Sheriff Law picked up the radio. "Not my jurisdiction. Not even close. Over."

The radio crackled again, and then, "They're requesting aid from the surrounding counties. Apparently most of their police force is out sick and the hospital is overflowing with patients. One of the intake nurses got punched in the face. Over."

"Can't spare anyone right now," Sheriff Law replied. "A third of my men are out with this damn superflu, too. Over and out." He clicked the radio back in place.

[*]

Carol rang the doorbell of the third-floor apartment. A young woman answered the door and looked at the bag full of food in Carol's hand. "Oh. They didn't tell you? My father died."

The bag shook. Carol steadied the food with a hand to the bottom. She'd talked to Mr. Wilson for a half an hour every time she delivered. He was one of her few social connections outside the house. He told her she was a lovely woman, and that she ought to become a professional chef. He'd even given her a brochure on a chef school in Atlanta he said his nephew was attending. She'd thought of taking classes, secretly, but how would she find the time to commute there and back before Ed got home? And where would she get the money? Ed controlled it all, and they didn't have that much to begin with.

"I'm so sorry to hear that," Carol told her.

"It was that superflu," the woman said. "The one they keep talking about on the news."

Carol took a step back from the door. That flu was the strongest strain yet. The vaccine wasn't working for anyone. Half of Sophia's class had been out sick yesterday. But this was the first death Carol had heard of in their town, though the morning news had reported several deaths in Atlanta this morning.

"If you'd like to go to the memorial, it'll be tomorrow afternoon at St. Matthew's at noon."

Carol nodded. "I will. Thank you."

She clamored down the stairwell, the hot bottom of the bag of food warm against her hand, the tears stinging her eyes.

[*]

Inside the station, the Dixon brothers were forced to empty their pockets, and all of their possessions were placed in plastic bags by a red-headed female deputy wearing light blue gloves. "Bet you could clean a kitchen sink real good with those on, darlin'," Merle said with a wink.

"Bet I could perform a brutal prostrate exam with them, too."

"You already fantasizing about me, sweetheart?" Merle asked as he slid his wallet onto the counter. "I hope _you're_ the one examining my _entire_ body for bite marks. You can take your sweet time."

The female deputy ignored him and slid his wallet into a plastic bag. On the counter, Daryl slapped down the little pocket knife his Uncle Clevus had given him, which he'd carried since he was eight, his larger pocket knife, and his Leatherman multi-tool. He continued to dig around in the large pockets of his work pants. Next came his wallet, a pack of cigarettes, a box of matches, a fishing lure, a couple of toothpicks, a beer bottle cap, his keys, and, then, with his eyes averted almost to the floor, he tossed two loose packages of condoms into the pile.

Merle burst out laughing. "How long you been carrying those around, little brother, just waiting for a girl to _finally_ come onto you?"

Daryl gritted his teeth and muttered, "Shut up."

"Bet they've been expired at least a year."

" _Shut up_."

"This way gentlemen," Sheriff Law said, gesturing with his hand. Merle smiled - or more like snarled - one last time at the female deputy before turning to follow the sheriff.

Sheriff Law paused in the hall outside two rooms and hollered to two of his deputies. He assigned one to examine Daryl and the other Merle. Before Merle was led to his room, he whispered in Daryl's ear, "They gave you the fag. Enjoy your exam, little man. Try not to get too turned on."

[*]

As she drove home, her meal for Mr. Wilson growing cold on the seat beside her, Carol fought back her tears. On the radio, a talk show host reported hospitals overflowing and more deaths in Atlanta. The epidemic, he said, appeared to be national. "And what is Washington doing?" he asked. "Where is FEMA? Where's the CDC?"

A caller suggested that Washington wasn't doing anything because "Washington is behind it. I bet this is some kind of biological weapon that got out of control."

"Now let's not jump to tin-foil-hat conclusions," the talk show host replied. "Remember how many people died of the flu in the 1918 pandemic. Nature can be a brute."

Carol switched off the radio, took a deep breath, and prayed neither she nor Sophia would come down with this thing. She let herself wonder for a moment, however, what life might be like if Ed _did._ What if he died, and they inherited the house, his small savings account, and his car, and they simply started life over without him?

[*]

The indignity burned in Daryl's gut like a slow, mounting fire as he stood in nothing but his boxers before a deputy who wore blue rubber gloves snapped over his light brown hands. The deputy's eyes were sweeping all over him, and Daryl was pretty sure the man's gaze lingered way too long on the front flap of his boxers.

"Lower the boxers," the deputy said.

Daryl went red from ear to ear. "Ya think my daddy bit me on the cock?"

"Lower the boxers."

Daryl glowered, stared off into a corner, and pulled them down to his knees. The deputy walked slowly around him. He was taking way too long in the back. What was he doing, checking out his ass? "Ya can see I ain't got no bite marks!" Daryl yanked his boxers back up.

"What's all this?" The deputy swept a rubbery finger over one of the scars on his back.

Daryl jerked away from his touch. "Just old scars."

"From what?"

"Hell ya care? Ain't bite marks."

"Looks like you've been _flogged_."

"Got scratched up in a bunch of thorns when I been huntin'," Daryl said.

"Looks like you've grown around those scars. Looks like someone took a good strong switch to you more than a few times when you were young." He paced slowly around to the front of Daryl and looked him right in the eyes. He was almost precisely the same height as Daryl, and his eyes were nearly black. "Your daddy beat when you were a boy?"

Daryl looked away.

"A beating like that…more than once…on a defenseless kid…shit. Something like that can sit in a man's gut for years. Just building…and building…."

"- If I was gonna kill my daddy, I'd of done it years ago."

The deputy took a step back and relaxed his posture. He let a hand fall to the gun on his hip. "That why you took off at seventeen? Why your brother took off years before you? So y'all _wouldn't_ kill him?"

Daryl didn't answer.

"But you didn't take off _completely_. You've checked in from time to time over the years. Maybe this last time, he said or did something you didn't like, and then you lost it and…" The deputy put two fingers to the back of his head and made a gunshot sound.

"Why the fuck would we of called ya if one of us had shot him?"

"Did you call us right when you found him?" the deputy asked.

"Yeah," Daryl lied.

"Yeah?" the deputy asked. "You didn't stop to take out a fake wall from Will Dixon's closet and clear out whatever illegal shit he had in there? You didn't fill a pick-up truck with a crossbow and a couple of rifles and some moonshine and some meth and drive it somewhere in the woods and do a half-ass job of hiding it?"

"Dunno nothin' 'bout that."

"Mhmhm. Because we've got that pick-up in our lot right now."

"Was that truck registered to me?" Darryl asked, knowing full well it wasn't.

"That truck wasn't registered _period_ ," the deputy said.

"Well then why ya think it's mine?"

"Just an amazing coincidence, I guess, that there were tire tracks leading from the cabin."

"Ain't no coincidence," Daryl said. "Obviously my daddy done cleared out his shit for some reason and then drove it into them woods in that truck and tried to hide it. Maybe from the man who shot 'em. Y'all oughtta be lookin' into the people he owed money."

"Mhmhm. He owe _you_ money?"

Daryl huffed and shook his head. "I look like a man of means to you?"

Sheriff Law peered in the door. "Why is he still in his underwear, Santiago?"

"I was asking him some questions," the deputy replied.

"Jesus, Santiago. Get him get dressed and finish getting him booked."

"Yes, sir," the deputy replied.

"Chargin' me with somethin'?" Daryl asked.

"We're holding you and your brother 'til we get a few things sorted out," the sheriff told him.

When Sheriff Law walked on, the deputy tossed Daryl his clothes. Daryl turned around, so he wasn't cock-to-face with the cop, and dressed quickly. Then the deputy took him and pressed his fingerprints against a black ink pad and then rolled them on paper.

As the man was leading him to an interrogation room, Daryl passed his big brother, who gave him a smirk. They skidded by one another, almost shoulder to shoulder. Merle craned his neck back and cried, "Lawyer up, baby brother! Don't fall for their shit!"

[*]

Carol set a plate of warm cookies and a glass of cool milk on the kitchen bar. Sophia dropped her backpack on the floor. Carol didn't nag her to hang it up. She never scolded Sophia for anything when Ed wasn't around. The girl got yelled at enough by her father. At least he didn't hit her. Carol told herself that if Ed ever raised a hand to Sophia, that would be the last straw. She'd leave for good then. Really, she would.

The house they lived in had been her parent's house, a small, two-story with the kitchen and living room and a bathroom downstairs, and two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. It was located three miles from the quaint downtown area, where her father used to work as a butcher.

Other houses had grown up around it over the years, and Carol knew all her neighbor's names, but she didn't know _them_. Not really. She'd stop by with a casserole every time a new one moved in, smile, and welcome them to the neighborhood, and that would be the beginning and the ending of their relationship. Ed didn't like her "gossiping with the neighbors."

"These are really good," Sophia said as she dipped a cookie in her glass of milk.

Carol pushed her grandpa's letter across the table to her, and Sophia opened it eagerly. She grabbed the $5 first and ran upstairs to her room to hide it in the coffee can. That gave Carol a chance to read the letter.

 _Dear Sophia,_

 _Thank you for the school photo you sent me. I've put it in a nice frame on my desk. I wish we could meet in person, too, but I'm afraid your daddy and I haven't gotten along well since he was a teenager. I'm enclosing $5. I'm proud of you for adding it to your college fund, but I want you to know that I have more money saved for your college. So use the cash for something fun, something you love, a hobby or a passion. Are you still interested in writing? Maybe you can buy yourself some jounrals and good pens. I still use an old-fashioned typewriter myself. I'm working on a mystery novel. Maybe you got the writing gene from me!_

 _I'm doing well, though I think I've come down with a cough and terrible runny nose. I'm hoping it's just allergies._

Carol thought immediately of the superflu that had killed Mr. Wilson, and her heart seized. Sophia would be heartbroken if her grandfather died, even though she'd never met the man. As her daughter ran back into the kitchen now, Carol looked away from the letter and pretended not to have been reading it.

Sophia was just drawing the typed paper to herself when the front door slammed open. Sophia's eyes widened in fear, and Carol seized the letter and shoved it into the junk drawer.

"Goddamn fucking distributor can't get his head out of his goddamn ass and get the order fucking right!" Ed roared. The door slammed shut.

"Go upstairs. Now," Carol ordered Sophia, and she fled. Thank God the stairs were on the other side of the kitchen and she didn't have to pass Ed.

Ed stormed into the kitchen, still cussing up a storm. His boot hit Sophia's backpack. He stumbled forward and caught himself on the kitchen counter. "Sophia!" he yelled. "Get down here and put your goddamn backpack away _now_ , girl!"

"I've got it, I've got it," Carol insisted and snatched it up.

Ed seized her roughly by the arm, ripped the backpack out of her hand, and tossed it back on the floor. "You spoil that girl! Make her do it!"

Sophia crept into the kitchen, snatched her backpack off the floor, and disappeared again.

Carol rubbed the arm Ed had just released. "You're home early," she said meekly. "Can I get you some cookies and milk?"

"You can get your goddamn ass back in that kitchen and cook me some dinner is what you can get."

[*]

This metal chair made Daryl's ass ache. Sunlight streamed in through the window, which appeared heavily reinforced. An intercom and a circular clock was the only ornamentation anywhere on the white walls. Daryl watched the thin, black second hand of the clock tick-tick-tick.

The door swung open with a creak and closed with a click. Sheriff Law set down a cup of coffee and slapped a manila folder on the table before taking a seat opposite Daryl.

"I want a lawyer," Daryl said.

"You don't need a lawyer. You haven't been charged with anything yet."

Daryl stood up. "So am I free to go?"

"No, sit down."

Daryl tried to remember what Merle had taught him to say when dealing with cops. "Are you detainin' me?"

"Of course we're detaining you! You've already been _arrested,_ son!"

Daryl sat back down. What was he supposed to say now? He wasn't entirely sure. Merle would know. Merle had a lot more run-ins with the cops then he did. In fact, the _only_ time Daryl had run-ins with the cops was when he was _with_ Merle.

Merle had taught him to raise holy hell if a cop so much as touched him. He was supposed to act like it hurt a hell of a lot more than it did, and shout out loud whatever was happening, over and over. They could use that later in court. Merle taught him what maneuvers cops were and were not allowed to use legally to subdue him physically, and what his rights were when dealing with them. But he couldn't remember all that information right now. "How can ya hold me if ya ain't gonna charge me?"

"We can hold you for up to 48 hours without charges."

"Don't think that's true," Daryl said.

"It's true," the sheriff assured him.

"Well I ain't answerin' any questions 'til I have a lawyer."

"Look, Mr. Dixon, I just - "

"- Lawyer."

"Daryl, now, as soon as you get - "

"- Lawyer!"

The Sheriff sighed, went to the wall, and pressed an intercom button. It crackled. The Sheriff leaned toward the speaker and said, "He's lawyering up. Send in the clown."


	3. Chapter 3

The minute hand of the clock clicked forward nineteen times while Daryl waited for the lawyer. Sheriff Law was reading something in his manila folder and making an occasional marginal note with a blue ballpoint pen. "You can get up and stretch your legs while you're waiting, if you want."

Daryl rose and began to pace the room. Eventually, he stopped and leaned with one shoulder against the wall and stared out of the window at the free clinic across the street. A line of at least twenty people wound its way out the door. Some were leaning against the brick wall of the building. Some were sitting down on the sidewalk. They were all coughing, on and off. He'd never seen so many come down with the same thing so fast. Half the guys on their painting crew had been out sick yesterday, too. At least he and Merle had gotten overtime pay.

The door creaked open. Daryl turned from the window as a little man shuffled inside. He couldn't be more than 5'6". His curly brown hair was balding in such a fashion that it looked like he had a monk's tonsure lining his head. His suit was one size too big. The man scurried around the table, pulled up a chair, and set down his briefcase. He clicked it open and Daryl stared at the disarrayed papers inside.

"This is Mr. Dawson," Sheriff Law explained. "He's the second best public defender in our entire county. Of course, we only have two."

Daryl sat down beside the lawyer and peered at him suspiciously. "Why cain't I get the first best?"

"Because he's with your brother right now. Not to worry, though. Mr. Dawson graduated almost in the middle of his class, didn't you, Mr. Dawson?"

Mr. Dawson adjusted his glasses on his nose.

"From a fine institution known as the Appalachian School of Law," the sheriff continued, "which has a bar passage rate of approximately 33%. But Mr. Dawson defied those odds, did you not, sir?"

Mr. Dawson pursed his lips. "I'm advising my client not to answer any of your questions and to invoke his right to remain silent."

Sheriff Law turned his eyes languidly from the lawyer to Daryl. "You sure you want to do that, Daryl? I know you didn't kill your father. I just want to help you find out who did."

"Truth is, Sheriff," Daryl replied, "cain't say I much care who did. So I'm gonna listen to my lawyer."

"You didn't turn your father's body over, did you?" the sheriff asked. "You didn't see what his face looked like?"

"Don't answer that," Mr. Dawson warned.

Daryl sat forward. He knew he shouldn't answer, but he was curious. "Nah. Why?"

"His face was all…" the sheriff kneaded his own face as if molding playdough. "I don't know, but it looked weird, almost like it was starting to slide off a little bit in places. And like I told you, he had a little skin hanging from his teeth. _Human_ skin, we think. Like he'd bit it straight off of someone. We're sending it down to the state lab in Atlanta. If it doesn't match the DNA we took from either you or your brother - and I'm pretty confident it won't - we'll be letting you go. But we sure would love to know why your father was tearing flesh off another human being."

"Cain't guess." Daryl shifted uneasily in his chair and thought about what Darlene had said Earl Hayes had said about those cannibal creatures coming back to life in the woods and eating people.

"You don't have to speak," his lawyer reminded him.

The sheriff drummed his long, graceful fingers on the manila folder. "The curious thing, Daryl, is that this is not the first dead body that has been found shot in the head with flesh in its teeth in my little county."

"It ain't?" Daryl asked.

"It's the _third_. In two days. I did a little research, and I learned of a similar case a in King County. I don't know what the hell I'm looking for, Daryl, but I'm pretty sure it's not you. But I think maybe you know something about what I _am_ looking for."

"Dunno what to tell ya." He'd sound crazy if he told the man what Darlene had told them.

"I could really use your help. I'm handling these cases short staffed, what with that superflu going around."

The door flew open and a deputy called for the sheriff. Sheriff Law rose. "Back in a few, gentlemen." He disappeared.

Daryl stood and paced the back of the room, pausing to peer over the lawyer's shoulder. The man had written, _Client likely guilty_ on the inside cover of a yellow folder. Daryl grunted and the lawyer shut the folder fast. He stiffened nervously when Daryl resumed pacing behind him.

The door swung open and Sheriff Law resumed his seat. "You ever hear of a man named Earl Hayes?"

"Don't answer that," his lawyer warned. "Sheriff, you need to stop asking these questions."

"One of my deputies just finished handling a domestic dispute at a cabin a little ways down the dirt road form your father's."

"Darlene's?" Daryl tried to ask it casually, but his voice betrayed him with a slight rise.

"Yes, Darlene Cox. Your father's next door neighbor. How well do you know her?"

"No more questions," the lawyer interrupted. "This ends – "

"- Nah," Daryl interrupted. "Nah, fuck off. Yer dismissed."

"What?" the lawyer asked.

"Don't want ya. Ya ain't gonna help me. Ya think I'm guilty."

"Well, whether or not I think you're guilty is not really relevant to - "

"- Fuck off!" Daryl shouted.

"You heard the man," Sheriff Law said.

The lawyer, shaking his head, gathered his things. "You're making a mistake." He left.

When the door was closed, Daryl leaned forward and asked, "Anythin' happen to Darlene?"

"Well, from what my deputy tells me, she and Earl Hayes had a little altercation."

"Kind of altercation?"

"Neighbors called because of all the wild screaming."

People must be getting scared up in those hills, if they were calling the cops for a mere domestic.

"When my deputy showed up," the sheriff continued, "Earl Hayes was holding a gun to Darlene's head and ordering her to amputate his left arm from the elbow down."

"The fuck?"

"My reaction precisely. I gather she's a nurse?"

"Yeah," Daryl answered. For years, Darlene had worked at the free clinic across the street. Today must have been her day off. "But she ain't no surgeon."

"Earl Hayes was ranting about flesh-eaters, blood-sucking cannibal creatures. You know anything about that?"

Daryl shrugged. "Sounds like somethin' out a horror movie."

"Earl's being booked right now. We'll run ballistics on all the guns we found in his cabin. Still waiting for the DNA on the skin in the teeth of the three victims. But Earl's got a bite out of him, right here." Sheriff Law pointed to the outside of his lower arm. "He's not saying he killed these men, but he _is_ saying they were all monsters, and that now that he's been bit, he's going to turn into one, too."

"Shit," Daryl muttered.

"We've got to keep holding all three of you until we get this all cleared up." The sheriff stood. "Now let's get y'all in the holding cell."

"Don't put Earl in our cell!" Daryl shouted. What if what Darlene had said was true? What if she had seen some undead thing staggering around in those woods? What if Earl was right? What is he was going to turn into one of them?

Sheriff Law laughed. "We've only got one holding cell, son."

"Don't put him in there with us!"

"Daryl, there is no such thing as flesh-eaters. There are monsters in this world, but they've got faces just like yours."

"What about my daddy's face? You said his face was all – "

"- I admit it looked weird," the sheriff said, "a little messed up, but I'm sure there's a logical explanation for it. And I aim to find it. Now Earl has received medical care. He's been bandaged. The bite wasn't that bad, and he'll be fine."

Before Daryl could protest again, the door swung open and a woman said, "Deputy Walsh from King County on line two for you, Sheriff, returning your call."

"Walsh? I wanted to talk to Grimes. He was the lead on that case."

"Can't. He's in the hospital, apparently. Got shot in the line of duty. You'll have to talk to Walsh."

The sheriff sighed. "I hate dealing with that guy. He's such a conceited ass."

As Sheriff Law walked out the door, he called to one of his deputies, "Show Mr. Dixon to the holding cell, would you?"

[*]

Carol and Sophia ate dinner alone at the kitchen table. Ed liked to eat in his armchair off a TV tray while he watched the news. The local anchor man's voice drifted from the living room as he reported on the superflu spreading like wildfire through the United States.

"Good thing we ain't in a city!" Ed called from the living room. "That shit spreads fast in those places. Told ya the city is for suckers."

"Are we going to get sick?" Sophia asked quietly.

"No, honey," Carol said. "There haven't been any deaths in our town from the superflu." That was a lie, of course. Mr. Wilson had died, but Sophia didn't know about him.

Ed came into the kitchen and got a beer out of the fridge, which he cracked open with hiss. "Go clear my plate," he told Carol, which she did. When she picked it up, she stopped to watch the TV. They were talking about a bizarre murder case in King County, in which the victim was discovered with human flesh in his teeth, and they were interviewing a handsome deputy name Shane Walsh, who had just stepped out of the King County police station.

"According to our sources," the reporter said, "there are _three_ similar cases in a neighboring county, currently under investigation by a Sherriff Law. We were unable to reach Sherriff Law for comment, but what can you tell us about those cases?"

Deputy Walsh stepped back from the microphone that was shoved in his face. He took off his hat and ran a hand through his thick, black hair. "Listen, I got this case dropped in my lap. Deputy Grimes was working on it, but he's been shot in the line of duty, and he's in the hospital. Now I've just received notice that the hospital is experiencing some kind of violent disturbance and is on lockdown. So if you'll excuse me, I have work to do."

Deputy Walsh pushed past the reporters.

 **[*]**

The iron bars shut behind Daryl with a clang. He glanced around the holding cell. It was formed by a gray cinder block wall along the back and one side and by bars on the front and other side. Earl Hayes, with a bandage tightly secured to his lower arm, was sitting on the end of a wooden bench rooted to the floor in the middle of the cell, and Merle was pissing in the urinal located in the corner where the cinder block walls met. A bunk bed was situated against one walled side.

Daryl turned to face the deputy who was locking the door, the same one who had examined him for bite marks. "Y'all sit tight," Deputy Santiago said and walked back to the main office, which Daryl could see from the cell.

Merle zipped up and flushed. He turned to face Daryl. "You enjoy that fairy's examination, little brother? He check your balls real good?"

Daryl said nothing.

"He's probably an AA hire," Merle announced, his voice rising high enough to be heard by Deputy Santiago, who was now standing and consulting with the red-headed female deputy in the main office. At the desk next to hers, Sheriff Law was hanging up the phone and then redialing. "I mean, spics only make up about six percent of this entire county, but they're over fifteen percent of the police force. Ever wonder why that is?"

Santiago was now peering back over his shoulder toward the cell. For someone who was always telling Daryl how to deal with cops, Merle sure had a way of pissing them off.

"Quotas," Merle said loudly. He walked over and sat down next to Earl on the bench. Daryl, meanwhile, walked as far away from Earl as he could, to the bunk beds, and jerked his head to signal his brother.

"What?" Merle asked.

Daryl jerked his head again.

Merle finally stood and meandered over. He rested an arm on the top bunk and leaned in close, until they were almost forehead to forehead. " _What?_ " he asked again, clearly annoyed. "You tell them somethin' you shouldn't of?"

"No. But Earl might of…well….he might of been bit by a flesh-eating monster."

"Monster!" Merle laughed. "Don't listen to Darlene. Darlene's a drama queen. Always has been, always will be."

Earl turned his gaze on them. He had one pupil that was slightly larger than the other, and one of his eyes was gray-blue while the other was cerulean blue. His light brown hair was wispy thin and looked something like a spider web on his head. Earl was a good guy, never caused anyone any trouble, kept to himself most of the time, and helped when someone lost a roof in a storm, but he wasn't exactly easy on the eyes. Daryl's mama used to say that Earl fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. "Formally, I call them GEEKS."

"What?" Merle asked.

"It's an acronym, for Genetically Engineered Eating Creatures. I think the military designed them as a biological weapon, but they infected normal humans. Their saliva has a contagion."

"Creatures…Creatures starts with a C, Earl," Daryl told him gently. "Not a K."

"Oh." Earl looked extremely disappointed in himself.

"But, hey, geeks is still good," Daryl reassured him. He glanced at Merle. "'Member that back alley freak show Uncle Clevus took us to that one time? At that carnival?"

"Yeah, yeah," Merle said. "They had geeks. Bit the heads off of chickens. Is that what your geeks do, Earl?"

"They bite the flesh off of _anything_ ," Earl said, "including people. They have to eat to live, and there's no difference to them between man and animal. Your daddy turned into one."

"Did he now?" Merle asked and chuckled. Then his face grew suddenly stern. He strode across the cell, bent down, and balled his fist in Earl's face. "Did you kill my daddy?"

Daryl walked quickly up to him and put a staying hand on his chest. He urged Merle back several steps.

"No," Earl answered. "I killed the thing that your daddy turned _into_."

Daryl had to strain to hold Merle back now, and he couldn't. His big brother burst free and, growling, took a swing straight at Earl. Earl's head snapped back, and he blinked and bobbed. Blood trickled from his nose.

Sheriff Law rushed to the cell. Merle held up his hands and backed away from Earl, as though he hadn't been touching him at all. "Santiago!" the sheriff yelled. "A little help!"

Santiago jogged from the front office to the cell and unlocked the door.

"Just get Mr. Hayes," the sheriff said, unsnapping his holster and putting his hand on the butt of his gun, at the ready.

Santiago took Earl by the arm and led him out before closing and locking the cell again. The sheriff cuffed the man.

"Where you takin' Earl?" Daryl asked.

"The county jail," the sheriff answered, "then the courthouse. So we can get him arraigned." He looked at Merle. "Thank for your unwitting assistance, Mr. Dixon. I now have a confession of sorts."

"That means we can go now, right?" Merle asked.

"I'm afraid not." Sheriff Law gestured to Santiago, who escorted Earl toward the front door of the station. "I've got two more bodies to consider besides your daddy, and then there's that similar case over in King County. Until I have a bit more idea what's going on, I think it would be advisable for me to hold you for the full forty-eight hours. We wouldn't want anyone to skip town."

"Shit," Merle muttered.

"Those beds aren't nearly as uncomfortable as they look," the sheriff assured him. "And I'll send one of my deputies to get you some dinner shortly." As he walked toward the front office, he said, "Winnona, did you get Deputy Walsh back on the phone for me?"

"No one's answering in King County," the female deputy called back to him.

"What do you mean no one's answering?"

"I mean no one's answering the phones. I can't get through."

"Well, I'll try him later," the sheriff said. "You hold down the fort. I'm going home to catch some Zs so I can work the night." He picked up his hat from the desk, slid it on his head, and went out the door.

Merle stood with his arms through the bars of the front of the cell, his eyes roaming the female deputy. She noticed and called over, "Shut down that male gaze, Dixon."

Merle smirked and asked, "Whatcha ya makin' us for dinner, sweetheart?"

"You get your choice of McDonald's or Joe's Deli, because that's all we've got in this town."

"I could sure use me some special sauce. Mhmhm hmmm."

The deputy flicked him off and Merle turned to face Daryl, who was slumping down on the bench. "Think Sheriff Law's just lookin' for somethin' to pin on us?" Daryl asked.

"You just keep your mouth closed, little brother, and leave it to me. Merle'll take care of everything." He walked over to the bunk beds and pressed down the top mattress with the palms of both hands. He did the same thing to the bottom bunk. "I claim the top."


	4. Chapter 4

Daryl rolled over on the bottom bunk and faced the wall. A glow from the overhead lights in the front office crept back toward the cell. Everyone had gone home by now except for Sheriff Law, who had returned an hour ago and now sat in the office with his back to the cell. He kept dialing the phone, listening, hanging up, and dialing again. Rinse and repeat.

Daryl had just dozed off when Merle slid down from the top bunk, his boots landing with a thud on the cement floor of the cell. "Ya hear that?"

"What?" Daryl sat up on the bottom bunk and rubbed his eyes. Through the bars, he saw the sheriff lock the front door. Sheriff Law walked backwards, leveling his rifle at the glass. "Hell is he doing?"

There was a pounding noise coming from the front of the office and a muffled sound of gnashing.

"What the fuck is - " Merle's words were drowned out by the sudden sound of shattering glass followed by a burst of gunfire.

[*]

Carol awoke to the sound of a shotgun pumping. Ed was looking out the blinds of their bedroom.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Think I saw those teenagers out there. Lurking around my car. The ones that played baseball with our mailbox. They better not be touching my baby."

His _baby_. It was a mid-size sedan, not a sports car.

"Gonna go check it out. Give 'em a scare."

Carol rolled over and went back to sleep, but the sound of a shotgun blast woke her. Terrified Ed had shot one of those kids, she dressed quickly.

Sophia was in the hall, wide-eyed. "Go back to your room," she ordered her little girl. "Lock your door until I knock. I'll knock three times."

Sophia nodded and ran.

[*]

Daryl and Merle rushed to the front of the cell and looked between the bars. A swarm of growling, chomping, gnashing human-like things lurched over a sea of shattered glass toward the sheriff, who kept firing indiscriminately, hitting arms and legs and shoulders and chests.

The things just kept coming.

"Sheriff!" shouted Daryl, remembering what Earl had said. "Got to get the brain!" But his warning did no good. The sheriff was in an unthinking mode of rapid fire. He was soon out of ammunition, and as he was reloading, the creatures overwhelmed him.

The Dixon brothers watched, mouths slightly agape in shock, as those creatures tore the screaming sheriff apart piece by piece, chewing and swallowing bloody chunks of flesh. The ones on the outside pressed in on those that were feasting, trying to get a taste of the prey. When they couldn't, they sniffed the air and began jerking toward the cell.

"Oh shit oh shit oh shit!" Merle backed up, tripped over the bench, and landed hard on his ass. He scrambled to get up and then scurried until he was standing against the middle of the cinder block wall, away from every open bar. Daryl stared in horror a moment longer before leaping over the bench to join his brother.

People used to say the Dixon brothers were born with their backs against the wall, but Daryl didn't think this was what they had in mind.

"Fuck!" Merle cried. "Are those the geeks Earl was ranting about?"

"Reckon so."

Arms stretched through nearly every pair of bars now. There had to be at least three dozen of those creatures pressing in on the cell. Over the top of the geek's heads, through the shattered glass of the front door in the office, Daryl could just make out two men in green scrubs running through the streets, shouting a woman's name, and firing rifles.

"Heeelp!" Merle cried. "Hey, you with the guns! Heeeelp!"

One of the men stopped, turned, and jogged forward. When he put his foot through the shattered front door, and saw the large herd of creatures surrounding the cell, he turned and fled.

"Hey!" Merle yelled.

Some of the geeks peeled themselves away from the cell and lurched after the fleeing man, but that still left about twenty creatures who continued to thrash and grasp for the meat inside. Outside, more gunshots vibrated in the night air, followed by the vroom of an engine and the sound of tires peeling away.

"Cowards!" Merle shouted. His fierce blue eyes surveyed the hungry faces wedged between the bars, the limbs stretching forward, and then fell on the bunk bed. Merle nodded to it.

Daryl caught his meaning and nodded back. Together, the Dixon brothers each grabbed one end of the bunk, dragged it out, and re-positioned it. Then they slammed it against the front cell bars, crushing some of the creature's arms. They dragged it back and smashed it against the bars again. And again. And again. Sometimes the grasping arms would retract, but they'd keep coming right back through another set of bars. Half of the geeks were now reaching in at the side of the cell instead of the front. So they moved the bunk bed over to the side and started smashing against the arms there, again and again and again.

"What's the point of this?" Daryl asked through his heavy breathing after they had pulled the bed back for what must have been the twentieth time.

"Ain't working, is it?" Merle asked between his own gasps for air.

"Nah."

"What do we do?"

"Fuck!" Daryl exclaimed.

"Ain't got time for that. 'Sides, I ain't a fag and I ain't into incest."

How could he possibly joke at a time like this? "Ain't no one comin' back for us, Merle. We's locked up in here. I bet they's all been devoured. The whole goddamn town."

All those arms flailed and reached. Deformed faces pressed between the bars. Teeth chomped.

"Fuck this," Merle said. "We're gonna do something."

"What?"

"This is just a holding cell. Ain't some high security prison. We got to be able to make weapons somehow."

"The coils!" Daryl cried. "On the box springs."

They threw off the mattresses from the bunk bed. It took a lot of strength, and grunting, and effort, but they worked a couple of coil springs loose and straightened them out into jagged points before inserting them between their knuckles and making fists.

Merle nodded to his right where the geeks were reaching through the bars. Then he looked straight ahead. "I take south," he said. "You take east."

"Think that's west."

"Just fuckin' kill 'em, brother!"

Daryl nodded, took in a deep breath through his nostrils, tightened his fist over the coil in his hand, and strode forward. He thrust the metal coil straight into the forehead of a geek. He'd expected more resistance than the dead flesh gave him, and he ended up jamming his weapon too far in to pull it back out. "Damn it!" he cursed as he returned to the bed to work out another coil from the box spring. Merle was doing better. He stabbed three geeks before he lost his coil and had to make another weapon.

Daryl went back to work, killing a second geek and then a third. He was about to slay his fourth when he found himself staring into the glassy, hollow green eyes of his first cousin.

"Awww...Billy Ray, man...Fuck no!" Daryl stumbled backwards two steps. He and Billy Ray Dixon had grown up together, just a year and a half and four cabins apart. Uncle Clevus used to take them both fishing and hunting and shooting. Billy Ray tended bar at the tavern, and Daryl usually stopped by for an on-the-house beer every time he was in town.

Merle marched over and stabbed his coil straight into the forehead of what had once been their cousin. As he ripped it back out, blood spurted all over his hands. "Don't be a pussy," he told his brother. "That ain't Billy Ray. They ain't who they was. None of 'em. So man the fuck up!"

Daryl swallowed. His nostrils flared. And then he ran forward to stab another geek.

[*]

Carol was pulling on her shoes when Ed ran back in the house and shut the door. "Oh shit!" he said. "Oh shit oh shit oh shit…."

He ran to the hall closet and swiped a box of shotgun shells off the shelf. They spilled all over the place. He scrambled to pick them up and re-loaded the gun.

"What's going on?" Carol asked.

"Stay inside. They're all over the place out there."

"What are all over the place?"

"The neighbors. They _used_ to be the neighbors. Now they're…just stay inside!"

He ran out onto the porch again, slamming the door behind himself. More shotgun blasts echoed through the night. Carol peered out through the window and saw three people lurching toward her husband. They moved in an inhuman way, and they were thrashing their jaws.

They weren't _people_ at all.

[*]

The Dixon brothers sat shoulder to shoulder in the center of the cinder block wall, away from the bars. The geeks they'd slain - or re-slain, as the case may be - lay littered around the cell on two sides. Flies buzzed around the twice dead bodies. They'd heard screams and gun shots outside in the distance last night, on and off, but things had grown quiet at about two in the morning, when they'd both dozed off for a few hours. The sunrise had stirred them awake again.

"Guess Earl was right," Daryl muttered.

"How in the hell did this happen so quick?" Merle asked.

"That superflu," Daryl said. "Bet that had somethin' to do with it. That's the infection. Spread like wildfire. Maybe everyone who had it died and turned into these things last night."

Merle shook his head. "Thought Earl said you had to get bit to get the infection."

"Must of been in the flu, too."

"Does that mean it's still in the air?" Merle asked. "Could we get it without gettin' bit?"

"Hell if I know."

"I'm so goddamn thirsty," Merle moaned.

"Shhhh!" Daryl pointed toward the front door. A geek was lurching by the broken glass. The brothers remained deadly silent, and the creature went on its way through the town.

"We're gonna die in here," Merle said eventually. "Everyone's dead, and we're gonna die of thirst."

"That urinal uses water," Daryl observed. "Little bit, anyway."

Merle leaped up, ran to the urinal, and looked down at it. He flushed first. When the fresh water came in, he scooped it up. Reluctantly, Daryl joined him. He cupped the water with his hands. His parched throat stopped burning as the lukewarm water coated it.

"How long you think this water will keep working?" Merle asked.

"Dunno." The lights in the front office were still on, so the electricity was working at the moment.

They flushed the urinal again and waited eagerly for the small pool of water to fill the bottom.

[*]

Ed came inside and locked the front door. By now Sophia and Carol were huddled together in the living room watching the news. The anchorman, looking beleaguered and terrified, was talking about an outbreak of the superflu killing not dozens or hundreds or even thousands, but _hundreds of thousands_ of people in Georgia. There had been reports of the bodies reanimating and eating other people.

"The Governor's Office has issued an advisory calling upon all surviving citizens to report to the nearest refugee camp." As he talked, a blue bar across the bottom of the screen began to list refugee camps by zip code. Carol watched anxiously to see where their nearest camp was located, but Ed shouted, "Get off the couch!"

Sophia and Carol quickly stood up.

"Help me block the door!"

With Ed, Carol pulled the couch in front of the door. Ed handed her the shotgun. Ed had _never_ let her hold one of his guns before.

He got his handgun off the shelf in the closet and a box of 9 mm. He loaded it and said, "Anything sets foot in here, you shoot it." He disappeared into the garage. One of those creatures threw itself against the living room window, causing Sophia to scream. It was Mr. Westcott, the man who had moved in next door two years ago and had once asked about Carol's black eye. She'd lied and said she'd opened a door into her face and then laughed at her foolishness.

Nervously, Carol readied the shotgun. She looked at the creature throwing itself against the window. Its eyes were hollow and its mouth deformed.

Ed returned with some plywood, hammer, and nails. He went outside on the porch, clucked at the creature, and when it stumbled away from the window, shot twice at it with his handgun before it fell. Carol noticed that it was the shot to the head that killed it, but hitting its chest had done nothing but cause it to stumble backward.

He came inside and began boarding up the window it had thrown itself against. "Don't want a bunch of them breaking the glass," he muttered.

Sophia, her voice trembling, asked, "What's going on?"

"I think I killed all them things," Ed said. "But there might be more in the downtown, coming our way. I don't know. But they ain't getting in here tonight." He put three nails in his mouth and began hammering. He nodded to Carol, and around the nails muttered, "Get her upstairs!"

Carol led Sophia toward the stairs. As she did so, she saw the television screen covered with black and white static.

After telling Sophia to lock herself in her room again, Carol returned downstairs to help Ed board up all of the windows. "I think you have to shoot them in the head," she said.

"You think I didn't figure that out?" he shouted. "What do you think I am? An idiot?"

When they were done with the boards, Ed scrolled through the TV channels and got only static or blank screens. He cursed and threw the remote control against the wall. The battery cover popped off and skidded across the floor.

Ed stuck his handgun in his waistband, plucked up the shotgun Carol had leaned against the wall when she was hammering, and started up the stairs. Carol followed. In the master bedroom, he peered through the blinds out the window. "Don't see anymore," he said. "I'll figure out what to do in the morning. You go sleep with Sophia. That girl's crying is driving me crazy."

 _That girl._ Twelve years had passed since Sophia was born, and to him, she was still _that girl_. Ed had wanted a boy. Three boys, in fact. Instead, he'd gotten nothing but a barren womb for six years. Carol got herself fertility tested, but, when she found out it wasn't her, she didn't dare tell Ed the problem was with him. Thankfully, she got pregnant that year, but she miscarried five months later. She got pregnant again the next year, and miscarried again. Then, finally, she had Sophia.

She should have left Ed before the girl was ever born. She should have left him a hundred times. But she was afraid of trying to make it on her own. And now, it was too late. Now, she _needed_ him. He was the only thing standing between her daughter and those creatures.

Carol went to the next room, crawled into Sophia's bed with her, and comforted her little girl.

 **[*]**

Several hours passed. The Dixon brothers sat on the floor, their backs to the wall. Merle kept talking and talking about what had happened and why it might have happened and what was going to happen. "A man can survive three minutes without air," he said at one point, "three hours without warmth, three days without water, and three weeks without food. Rule of three, brother."

"Yeah, and how many hours can he survive with you runnin' yer goddamn mouth?"

"We've got the air," Merle said, "we've got the warmth, and we've got the water, for now."

"Think I've died and gone to hell," Daryl muttered. He'd spent most of his adult life roaming and working with his brother, but this was different. They were locked in a cell together now. He couldn't go out hunting alone for a couple of days and nights to get some space from Merle, the way he'd so often done over the years. And Merle wasn't going to disappear intermittently to meet his dealer or go whoring somewhere. Merle was going to be here, by his side, running his mouth, until they both starved to death.

"If you die first, I'm eatin' you," Merle said. He glanced down at Daryl's lap. "Though that cock's barely gonna be a snack."

"How ya gonna cook me, dumb ass?"

"Daryl tartare. I hear it's a real delicacy."

A single gunshot sounded somewhere outside the shattered front door of the office. Both brothers leaped up and ran to shout for help through the cell bars.

One long, bare, toned leg ending in a brown-and-white snakeskin cowgirl boot stepped in through the broken door, followed by another.

"Darlene!" Daryl yelled.

Still in her favorite cut-off jean shorts - but wearing a yellow tank top this time - Darlene strutted into the office. She had a brown, wooden .22 rifle resting against her left shoulder.

"Get the keys off the sheriff, sugar," Merle shouted.

Darlene looked down at the mangled, mostly consumed mass that was once the sheriff. She poked around with the barrel of her rifle for a minute or two. "A geek must of swallowed 'em," she said.

"Shit!" Merle yelled.

Darlene slung her rifle up against her shoulder again. "Not to worry, boys. I got an idea." She disappeared out the front door.

"Darlene's got an idea," Merle said. " _Darlene_ has got an _idea_. Well if that ain't a first."

[*]

Rays of sun danced across Carol's eyelids as if the world hadn't changed. For a brief moment, as she stirred awake beside her daughter, she thought it had all been a dream. But when she went to look outside the window, Ed was standing in the yard between their house and the neighbor's, his shotgun against his shoulder, poking one of those creatures with his toe. He stooped down and went through its pockets. Then he walked over and went inside the house.

Carol ventured downstairs while Sophia, who had eventually cried herself to sleep, continued to slumber. Ed came inside with two six packs of beer. "Where did you get those?"

"Where do you think? They're dead. They won't mind. They're all dead except the Smiths and the Taylors, and I saw them both leaving this morning. Said they were headed for some refugee camp in Atlanta they heard about on the news."

"Should _we_ leave for Atlanta?'

"Hell no! Probably crawling with those things. And you don't need the government to take care of you. You've got me. We're hunkering down here."

Carol's stomach felt like it was eating itself. She had him. Here, at the edge of the world, with no neighbors even to speak to, she had only him, until death closed in on them all with gnashing jaws.

[*]

The Dixon brothers watched anxiously through the bars for Darlene's return. Eventually, they heard the sound of a loudly purring engine. A pick-up truck moved backwards toward the station, until its tail could be seen through the shattered glass of the front door. A black man, big enough to be a linebacker, with a thick head of tight, curly hair, leaned out of the open front driver's side window and aimed a black, semi-automatic rifle. He began shooting down the street.

Darlene squeezed around the tail of the truck and through the shattered glass door. She attached the end of a large metal chain to the hitch on the back of the truck and then, stepping over the sheriff's picked-over corpse on her way, dragged that chain toward the cell. It had hooks on the end which she secured to the bars of the cell door. "Let me just move these corpses out the way and we'll pop you right out, boys." She grasped the ankles of one of the geeks that had fallen in front of the cell door and dragged it away.

"Is that _my_ truck?" Merle asked.

"Yeah," Darlene said as she yanked another body clear. "I got it out the lot. Idiot cops left the keys right under the sunvisor. Sorry about the busted window. Had to get inside somehow."

"Who the hell's drivin' it?" Merle asked.

"That's Marcus, my fiancé."

"You're marryin' a nigger?" Merle's voice rose in surprise.

Frowning sternly, Darlene dropped the geek she was dragging, paced toward the cell door, and removed the hooks. "You can rot in here, asshole." She turned and strutted away, hips swaying, metal chain disappearing across the floor.


	5. Chapter 5

"Darlene!" Daryl called after she dragged the chain away. "C'mon, girl, come back now!" He turned to Merle and hissed, "Apologize!"

"I ain't apologizing to that ten-cent whore."

"Apologize! Christ, Merle, she was gonna get us out of here!"

"Darlene, sweetheart," Merle called, "I'm sorry, darlin'. I didn't mean nothin' by it." When Darlene turned around, Merle flashed that self-assured smile of his. "C'mon, sugar, we go way back now. Way back."

Darlene strutted back to the cell. Outside, Marcus hung out the window of the truck and shot twice more. "Just so you know, Merle," she said, "I'm only doing this for that one time you kicked Johnny Harrison's ass for me."

"I did kick it good and hard, didn't I?"

"Yeah, and that jackass deserved it for tryin' to rape me. So this is for that." Darlene slapped the hooks back on the bars of the cell door. She tested the hooks to make sure they were secure before walking away from the cell door. After putting two fingers in her mouth, she let out a shrill whistle, and Marcus gunned the engine. The chain unraveled and grew taunt, and the cell door shuddered, but it didn't pop open.

Daryl could see two geeks ambling toward the truck. Marcus paused to shoot them out the window. He fired six shots before both were down. "Does he know to get the brain?" Daryl asked.

"Yeah, but he ain't exactly a marksman," Darlene said. "And I just gave him that rifle today, so he's still gettin' used to it."

"Think maybe the sound of the gunshots is drawin' 'em," Daryl warned.

"Yeah, well, ain't much else he can do," Darlene said.

Marcus backed up the truck and tried gunning forward again, faster and harder this time. The door rattled again but did not burst open.

"This ain't gonna work!" Merle protested.

"It'll work," Darlene assured him. "Sheriff's Department always buys the cheapest shit it can get. "

Sure enough, on the third try, the cell door popped open. It didn't just pop open. It came clean off its hinges. Merle dashed out first, shouting, "Evidence locker!"

They found the evidence locker, and Darlene shot the lock off of it with her rifle. The Dixon brothers each grabbed a rifle and a handgun and some ammunition. Daryl grabbed the crossbow, too, with the arrows, his knives, Leatherman, and maglite. He left the condoms. He didn't suppose he'd have much use for those now. He didn't guess he'd be hanging out in bars with Merle any more, getting thrown his big brother's scraps.

Merle was busy gathering up plastic bags of drugs.

"C'mon!" Darlene cried. "We ain't got time for that shit, Merle. Just get the weapons!"

On the way out, Darlene took the hooks off the cell door and dragged the chain back, removed it from the trailer hitch, and tossed the whole thing in the bed of the pick-up.

When Daryl got through the door, Marcus was hanging out the busted driver's side window and leveling his rifle. "Don't fire!" he shouted at Marcus. "It's drawin' more! I'll use my bow!"

Marcus drew himself back inside the car, and Daryl shot two geeks, struggling to reload quickly between shots. The arrows made a woosh and a thunk, but nothing like the attention-drawing blast of a gun. He ran to recover his arrows, pulled them with a revolting slurp out of the brains of the geeks, and reloaded the bow. He bounced a little on his feet as he waited for more geeks to approach. He felt like a boxer gearing up for a fight, the adrenaline was coursing so strongly through his veins.

"Daryl!" Darlene yelled out of the passenger's side window. "What the hell you waitin' for? Just get the hell in!"

Daryl turned and ran to the bed of the truck, where Merle was already sitting, and vaulted himself in. Marcus drove the truck forward quickly, running down a geek in the process. There was a thud and the truck bounced up and down. A little blood splattered the windshield.

Merle unscrewed the cap of one of the ceramic whiskey jugs, which (along with the moonshine still) the cops had apparently not yet processed as evidence. It was all just still in the bed of the truck. Merle took a big chug and hissed. He passed it to Daryl, who looked at it cautiously, but then sipped. He turned and spit it out all over the street. Merle laughed and Daryl handed him back the jug. "Yeah," Daryl said, "still tastes like piss."

Merle drank some more. The truck swerved suddenly around a small crowd of geeks and the jug went flying. Whiskey spilled all over the bed, sending up a pungent scent. Daryl slid into his brother, practically landing in his lap. Merle grinned down at him. "I know Darlene may be the last woman in the world, brother, but that's no reason to get fresh with _me_."

Daryl quickly scurried back a few feet and began picking up the scattered arrows and putting them back.

"Wish she hadn't brought her black beau along." Merle smirked. "Sure would be nice to have someone to fuck in the end times."

"Shh!" hissed Daryl, jerking his head toward the cab of the truck. "Her man's right there!"

"He cain't hear us through that glass."

As if on cue, the window to the cab came open. Daryl braced himself for the fury of Darlene's fiance, but it was only Darlene herself who stuck her head through, and she spoke casually. "We're gonna stop at Doc's Gun and Tackle on the outside of town. Load up."

"Then what?" Merle asked.

"Marcus has an aunt in in Atlanta. We're gonna go check on her."

"No, no, no, darlin'," Merle told her. "You see how many damn geeks are walkin' around in this small town? Can you imagine how many there are in Atlanta?"

"Maybe Atlanta ain't been touched."

"What's the radio been sayin'?" Merle asked.

"Radio ain't been workin'. Most stations are static. Except for this one that just keeps playing _Ladies Love Country Boys_ on an endless loop."

"Well they do, don't they?" Merle asked with a wink.

"We might get better reception when we get near Atlanta," Marcus said. His voice was deep and resonant, like a sports caster's.

"The monkey can speak!" Merle exclaimed.

Marcus slammed on the breaks and flung the truck into park. This caused Merle and Daryl to slide forward and hit the tail gate. Marcus threw open the door and jumped out of the front seat to walk around to the bed of the truck. He was much younger than Merle, and he stood about two inches taller and six inches broader. "Want to say that to my face?"

Merle smirked. Darlene got out of the passenger's side, came around, and put a hand on Marcus's back. "C'mon, honey bear, ignore Merle. He's an ass. But he's got skills. He'll come in handy."

A growl rumbled somewhere deep inside Marcus's massive chest. "Can't believe you made me waste time rescuing these crackers."

"Crackers?" she asked. "Is that how you think of me?'

"Nah, baby," Marcus insisted. "You ain't a cracker, sweetheart." He turned and slipped his arms around her waist. "You're more like a smooth, delicious, vanilla milksha – "

"Duck!" Daryl shouted.

Marcus turned to see two approaching geeks, and he promptly ducked as ordered. Darlene squatted down with him. Daryl shot one of the creatures with the crossbow and Merle got the other with a rifle. Marcus pulled out Daryl's arrow for him, handed it back, and quickly resumed the driver's seat as more geeks began lurching toward the pick-up. He tore off just as Darlene was slamming her door shut.

[*]

"Make nice with Marcus," Daryl hissed when the truck slowed to a stop alongside the curb of Doc's Gun and Bait Shop.

"I'm always nice," Merle replied. "I'm like sunshine on a cloudy day."

Daryl frowned and vaulted himself out of the truck. The doors to the cab slammed shut. The group climbed one by one through the shattered window of the storefront.

"Why didn't Doc put the bars down in front of the window when he went home?" Darlene wondered aloud.

"'Cause Doc didn't go home." Daryl aimed his crossbow at at the gnashing, growling, geek that had once been Doc. It was trapped beneath a heavy, overturned shelf, probably by the looters who had already cleaned out most of the shop. They'd left him there, like a wounded animal. They hadn't even had the decency to put him out of his misery.

Daryl was getting used to killing the shells of the people he'd once known, but this one wasn't easy. He'd been visiting Doc's Gun and Bait Shop since he was a boy. It was here that Merle had always stopped to buy bait and tackle for their fishing trips together, and here that Uncle Clevus had bought Daryl his very first rifle, a wooden .22 Winchester. Good Ol' Doc had put a youth stock on it just for Daryl, handed him a pocket knife, and told him to carve his initials on the butt.

Daryl pulled the trigger and winched as his arrow plunked into Doc's forehead.

"Looks like he put up a fight," said Merle, stepping over the bodies of several geeks Doc had apparently shot before being bitten himself. "Now let's see if Betsy got caught under that shelf with him."

As Daryl retrieved his arrow, Merle slid the shelf aside.

"Who's Betsy?" Marcus asked.

"This lovely lady right here," Merle said as he held up a hand-carved Remington Model Seven rifle in classic walnut. "Ain't she beautiful? I'm gonna take her and give her a good home."

The backpack stand at the front of the store was untouched, so they each took one to fill. There were no guns left, but a few hunting knives remained amid the shattered glass of the cases. Darlene shouldered her rifle and took one. "Guess I can stab 'em. That don't make as much noise as a gun." She drew her arm back and thrust it forward as if practicing her moves. "What's it like, stabbin' 'em?" she asked Daryl.

"Like stabbin' a man to death, I guess," Daryl answered. "Not that I've ever done that."

"Well, Marcus has," Darlene said. "Haven't you, honey bear?"

Marcus nodded as he clipped a new hunting knife on his belt.

Merle looked at him skeptically and asked, "You didn't get caught?"

"I called the cops," Marcus answered.

"On yourself?"

"It was self-defense. I was twelve. He broke in, tried to rape my mom. They didn't charge me with anything."

"Marcus used a kitchen knife," Darlene said. "Cutco, wasn't it?"

Marcus nodded. "Top of the line."

Merle looked at him with an expression that bordered on respect. "You ain't from around here though, are ya?"

"Grew up in Chicago," Marcus answered. "But I spent a lot of my summers with my aunt in Atlanta. Came down here to go to the University of North Georgia. They gave me a full scholarship."

"UNG ain't got a football team," Merle said.

Marcus narrowed his eyes. "For academics."

While they were talking, Daryl spied a protein bar under an overturned snack stand. He plucked it up, ripped open the package with his teeth, and began devouring the bar.

"Marcus just finished his M.B.A," Darlene said proudly.

Merle looked Marcus over. "How old are you anyhow?"

"Twenty-seven."

Merle whistled. "Wooh wee, Darlene! Robbin' the cradle, girl! Tell me now, how did you two lovebirds meet?"

"At the university," Darlene said.

"At the university," Merle repeated. He chuckled, low and mean. "And what were _you_ doin' there, Darlene?"

"I _go_ there, asshole. Part-time. Trying to upgrade my RN to a BSN. Well...I was. Anyhow, when the shit hit the fan, Marcus fought his way all the way back to my cabin just to check on me. Didn't you, honey bear?"

"Sure did," Marcus said with a wiggle of his eyebrows.

Daryl swallowed the last bit of his protein bar. He licked his fingers one by one. "Phones ain't workin'?" he asked.

"Lines are jammed, I guess," Darlene replied. "Everyone's tryin' to check on their people."

"Good thing I did come in person, though," Marcus said, "because her car wouldn't start."

Daryl left the wrapper of the protein bar on the store floor. "Then where's yer car?"

"We stopped to grab some...uh...things...at the drug store - "

"- Condoms," Darlene clarified. "We left the car running in case we needed to make a quick get away, but someone took it. We walked the two blocks to the sheriff's office to get y'all."

"You were actually comin' there for us?" Daryl asked with surprise. He assumed she'd been passing by and heard the cry for help.

"Yeah. I saw the sheriff take y'all. I knew you were in there. Figured a couple of mountain boys like the Dixons would be good to have in an apocalypse." Darlene walked over to the storage closet and rattled the knob. She fished in the pocket of her cut-off jean shorts and pulled out a metal contraption that looked something like a hair pin, which she inserted in the keyhole. Within fifty seconds, she had the door open.

"If you knew how to do that," Marcus asked, "why did you go to all that trouble with the chains?"

"'Cause I've always wanted to pull a door off its hinges with chains." She smiled. "That and I don't know how to pick those cell doors."

Daryl hit the light switch as they all walked into the storage room. One bar of the overhead light flickered and buzzed, dimly illuminating the area. Doc had kept a lot of extra inventory back here for re-stocking. No guns, but plenty of ammo, water bottles, tackle, and snacks (beef jerky, sunflower seeds, trail mix, and protein bars). There were even a few five-gallon gas cans, probably for Doc's fishing boat.

Marcus was still looking at Darlene with surprise. "How did you know how to pick that lock so fast?"

Merle smirked. "I reckon Darlene's picked up a few tricks of the trade over the years."

"What trade?"

"Oh, you don't know?" Merle asked with a mock tone of innocence. "Her daddy was the best car thief in all of north Georgia."

Marcus blinked and then looked at Darlene as though he felt betrayed. "You never told me that."

"My daddy died in the state pen. I don't like to talk about it."

Marcus glowered. "But you talked to _Merle_ about it?"

"Didn't _talk_ to him 'bout it. He just _knows_. We's all from the same neighborhood." She grabbed an empty cardboard box. "Well don't just stand there with your dicks in your hands, boys. Load the hell up!"

Daryl took the box from her hand and began gathering individual boxes of ammo.

[*]

Ed spent the morning looting the neighbor's houses and bringing food back to theirs. Carol eyed every six pack of beer warily. He was going to be home all day now, with nothing to do but drink. She advised Sophia to stay in her room, writing in her journal and listening to her CD player. They'd stopped getting radio reception three hours ago.

Ed opened the fridge to put more in and found it wasn't working.

"Damnit!" He flicked the light switch on and off over the kitchen counter, but it wasn't working either. Carol tensed, ready for one of his outbursts, but he said, "It's okay. I've got that generator and enough gas to last us a month. Bet you're glad I spent money on it now, huh, you stupid bitch?"

Carol nodded meekly.

Ed left the kitchen to put a DVD into his still charged laptop – some war movie – and plopped down in his arm chair and popped open a beer. Carol picked up the kitchen phone, just to check if they still had a dial tone, but she didn't have anyone to call. She'd tried 911 earlier, but she'd only gotten a busy signal. "Does your cell phone work?" she asked Ed as she walked into the living room. He didn't let her have one of her own.

"Not to make calls. Quiet. I'm watching."

Carol picked up a crossstitch she'd been working on for Mr. Wilson and sat down in the rocking chair. There was no point in finishing it now, but she needed something to do, anything to pass these strange hours with Ed inside and those undead things out there, roaming whatever was left of the world.


	6. Chapter 6

They had to drag out and discard all the parts of the moonshine still to make room in the bed of the truck for everything. When Merle was laying fishing rods, lures, and tackle in the bed, Marcus said, "We don't have the time for your little _hobby_."

"My little hobby?" Merle swaggered closer and got right up in Marcus's face.

Marcus balled his hand into a fist.

"Boys," Darlene warned. "Quit your pissin' and get back to loadin'."

"Eventually, we're gonna need to hunt and fish to eat," Merle said. "We should go back up the mountain, hole up until the military takes care of all this shit. Bet the geeks won't hike all the way up there. "

"I told you - we're going to Atlanta to check on my aunt," Marcus insisted.

"That's the most dumb ass thing I ever heard," Merle said. "We need to go where there won't be hordes of these things."

"Like I said, maybe Atlanta's untouched," Darlene told him. "Or maybe the military's controlling the problem there. We won't know unless we go. We can't just hole up in them mountains. What if the world's going on as normal outside 'em?"

"She's got a point," Daryl said.

Merle turned his gaze from Marcus to his brother. "Daryl, you've lived in these mountains your entire damn life. What do you care if the world's still going on outside 'em?"

Daryl shifted on his feet. "Ain't true. I been to Augusta."

"Oh, yeah…." Merle said. "I forgot about your _big job_ in the _big city_. How long that mechanics gig last? Nine months?"

"Ten," Daryl spat defensively. "And it paid more than anything you ever done!" But he'd lost that job in the end, when the new Sears Auto Center opened up and drove the mom and pop shop out of business. He couldn't get hired on anywhere else in Augusta, because he wasn't "certified." He ran out of money, and was forced to come back to north Georgia, his tail between his legs. He'd found Merle and asked his big brother to help him find another job. They'd ended up digging irrigation on a farm just forty miles south west of the town where they'd grown up, until that work dried up, too, and they moved north east again.

Merle nodded behind Daryl. "Got a visitor."

Daryl slid his crossbow off his shoulder, whirled, and shot a geek. More were coming down the street.

"See this?" Merle asked, gesturing to the fallen body as Daryl reclaimed his arrow. "See how many there are here, in Bumfuck, Georgia? You really want to go to Atlanta?"

"At least let's drive closer," said Daryl as he reloaded his bow. "See if we can get some radio reception. Find out what the hell's goin' on."

Merle sighed. "Fine! But we got to go get my chopper first."

"You've got a helicopter?" Marcus asked.

"No, dumb ass. My _bike_."

"We're not going out of the way for anybody's bike," Marcus insisted.

"Left it parked by the work trailer where we paint houses," Merle said, "at an unfinished development. It's less than twenty miles south from here. Hell, we got to go south to Atlanta anyhow."

Daryl nodded toward the bed of the pick-up, which was three-quarters full now. "Barely got room for both me and Merle in there already. Could use the bike. They got all sorts of gas cans on that construction site, too. Could grab those."

"And we'll need 'em," Merle added. "Stations are gonna be pumped dry with everyone fleeing."

"He's right, honey bear," Darlene said. "Let's stop and get Merle's bike and the gas."

Marcus frowned. "Why do you keep defending this asshole?"

"Honey," Darlene cooed, putting a hand on Marcus's arm, "we ain't gonna get all the way to Atlanta without the Dixon brothers."

"You don't trust _me_ to get us there?" he asked. "You think you need this trailer trash?"

"Marcus, if they're trailer trash, well, then, so am I!" Darlene crossed her arms over her chest and stomped her booted foot.

"You ain't trash, baby," Marcus insisted. "You're just a _special_ kind of class." Darlene continued to fume. "Fine," he said. "We'll stop for the damn bike. But I'm driving!" He headed for the front door.

Merle leaped into the bed of the pick-up, among the gas cans and ammo and tackle and food. Daryl climbed in and crammed himself into the only free spot left, two feet from Merle, on the other side of two five-gallon gas cans.

When they were driving again, Merle turned to Daryl and said, "We're gonna have to shed ourselves of that asshole sooner or later."

"He's with Darlene."

"Then we're gonna have to shed ourselves of Darlene, too."

Daryl shook his head slightly.

"What?" Merle asked. "Ain't like she's yer girlfriend. She ain't even _mine_."

"Hell, Merle. We've known her since we's kids, man. She just saved our lives."

"Well, I am grateful to her for that," Merle agreed, "but that don't mean we got to haul her and her sorry ass boyfriend through an apocalypse. Let's camp at the construction site for the night. Soon as they go to sleep, we take the truck and the bike and all this shit, and we get up in them mountains."

"What, and just leave Darlene without a vehicle?"

"You know her daddy taught her how to wire cars. She can get one going."

"That don't sit right, Merle. Just takin' off like that. She's our _people,_ man."

"We ain't got no people, Daryl. Sooner you learn that, the longer we'll survive."

Daryl stared down at the fishing pole near his feet.

Merle reached out over the gas cans and clapped him on the shoulder. He gave that shoulder an affectionate squeeze and said, "It's just you and me against the world, brother! Like it's always been. Right?"

There was a part of Daryl that reveled in this rare display of affection, the eager little boy who looked at his big brother like the moon in the sky. But there was another part that harbored a niggling doubt, which somersaulted somewhere deep inside his stomach. "I guess," he agreed quietly.

"You guess?" Merle asked. "You and me, brother! Let me hear you say it."

"You and me, Merle," Daryl said, growing louder as he spoke, as if he could convince himself that way: "You and me, brother!"

"That's the spirit!" Merle cried. Grinning, he slapped Daryl's back.

The truck picked up speed. The wind whipped around the Dixon brothers, ruffling Daryl's short hair and cutting through the thick Georgia heat.

Like a football coach trying to rile up his players, Merle yelled into the wind, "You and me, brother!"

"You and me, brother!" Daryl shouted back. "You and me against the whole fuckin' world!"

[*]

Ed swept his legs down from the coffee table, ran to the corner of the room and seized his shotgun. He peered out through the screen door (the front door was open to let in the spring air, since the air conditioning wasn't working).

Carol put her crossstitch down and went to look over his shoulder. A large, white van came to a stop in front of their house. It said _First Baptist Church_ on the side, which was a bit of a joke, because there was no Second Baptist in their town. When the driver's side door opened, Carol recognized T-Dog immediately.

Ed kicked open the screen door and levelled his shotgun. "Get off my property! Now!"

Carol stepped out on the porch behind him. "It's okay. I know him. I went to school with him. He works at the post office. His name's Theodore Douglas."

"What the hell are you doing at the post office?" Ed glared back at her and didn't lower his gun.

"I had to buy stamps. To send in the bills."

T-Dog held up his hands. "I'm just looking for survivors," he said. "I've got several people in the van. The downtown is completely overrun with those things. The entire town is out of power. No running water either. We're heading to the refugee camps in Atlanta. Do you need a ride?"

"We ain't goin' to Atlanta!" Ed shouted. "Now get off my lawn!"

"They're _all over_ the downtown. They'll come this way looking for food."

"You deaf?" Ed shouted. "I said – Get. Off. My. Lawn."

"Carol?" T-Dog asked, looking around Ed, like he was extending the invitation _just_ to her, like she could run right now if she wanted to. Except T-Dog didn't appear to have a gun. And her husband did. And she wasn't sure she wanted to take her chances in a church van against an unknown number of walking dead things with no weapon. And she wasn't sure she wanted a confrontation between Ed and T-Dog either.

"I think we're going to hold up here," she told him. "Wait for the military to…restore order."

"Okay," T-Dog said. "But like I said, there are a lot in the downtown area. Be on the look-out." He waved to them, got back in the van, and drove away.

Ed came inside and tried the water in the kitchen sink. It sputtered, squirted, and then ran dry. "Bet you're glad I'm a prepper now, huh?" he asked. "Got fifty gallons of storage water in the garage. We're gonna weather this just fine until they get the power and water running again." He slammed the handle of the faucet down, muttered "stupid bitch" beneath his breath, and went out to the garage to get the water.

[*]

Marcus slowed the truck to a stop. A mile up ahead, the highway was a parking lot of honking, screeching, crashing, and abandoned cars, with some people inching their way forward on the shoulders. Others took flight on foot.

Darlene opened the window between the cab and the bed. "You know any back roads to your construction site?"

"Yeah," Merle said. "Go back to the last exit."

Darlene closed the window. Marcus made a U-turn in the middle of the road and drove back on the shoulder, passing a few cars on the way.

"Where the fuck's the National Guard?" Daryl asked. "Thought they'd be here by now."

"Likely in Atlanta and Columbus and Augusta," Merle said. "Doubt they care about us up here."

When they were six miles from the construction site, Darlene threw open the window again and stuck her head through. "Got some radio reception," she said, "and then we lost it again. News was talkin' _global_ outbreak. Said the military's trying to fight 'em, but there's rumors that the disease killed off half the army, and a lot of the ones that's left just up and abandoned post to go get their families."

"Jumped ship?" Merle asked. "In the middle of an apocalypse?"

"President, Vice President, all them important Washington people went into underground bunkers or some such shit."

"Well shit!" Merle said. "How'd it start?"

"Didn't say. But they said the National Guard - what's left of it - been settin' up refugee camps in Atlanta. Marcus is hoping we can find his aunt in one of those." She drew her head back in and closed the window again.

"You hear that brother?" Merle asked.

"Yeah, I heard."

"They want to go look through refugee camps. For his goddamn _aunt_. Not even his _mama_."

"Reckon his mama's all the way in Chicago."

"I can't imagine a worse place to spend the apocalypse than in a herd of mewling city folk trying to suck milk from the tit of the government!" Merle shook his head. "We got to get rid of this dead weight. We got to get my bike, take this truck and everythin' in it, loot the nearest liquor store, hit the adult store, swing by the Wal-mart, get us some batteries and gear and shit, and then get up in them hills, throw us a party 'til all this shit gets worked out."

"How's it gonna get worked out?" Daryl asked.

"Well, I dunno, but we ain't gonna work it out by goin' to Atlanta!"

Daryl didn't much feel like going to Atlanta either. There was nothing in Atlanta for him, and the idea of crowds of people made his skin crawl. "Maybe we don't need to split on 'em, though. Maybe we can talk 'em out of goin' to Atlanta," Daryl suggested.

"Ain't nobody can talk Darlene out of nothin' she's already talked herself into. You know that."

"Reckon that's true," Daryl admitted.

"'Sides, what do we need them for? Ain't nothin' they can do we can't do on our own."

"Darlene can wire cars and pick locks," Daryl reminded him.

Merle stretched an arm out on the rim of the bed of the pick-up. "We can wire a car if we have to."

"An old one, maybe, but not them new ones. And not any of 'em as fast as Darlene."

"If we keep runnin' with those two lovebirds, Daryl, they'll put us at risk. We'll be riskin' our lives half the time to save their sorry asses."

"We'd of died in that cell. They saved us."

Merle shook his head. "You saw what a shit shot Marcus is. Takes him two or three bullets to bring down one geek. That's gonna be a problem."

"Bet he can stab 'em though. And Darlene's a decent shot."

"We're gonna need all this shit up in them mountains," Merle reasoned. "Now you said yerself Darlene can wire a car. She can do it faster than green grass through a goose. They'll be fine on their own."

"I guess," Daryl agreed reluctantly, though he was a little confused as to how Merle could say they'd be fine on their own but they'd also constantly be needing rescue if they were all together. "But...we ain't got to take everythin', do we?"

"We ain't gonna take their rifles. They can still shoot the geeks. But we need the rest of this shit."

"Should leave 'em half the ammo."

"Half?" Merle scoffed. "We'll leave 'em o _ne_ box of each kind."

"Should leave 'em half the food and water and gas, too," Daryl said.

" _One_ can of gas," Merle insisted. "Be some already in whatever car Darlene steals, and they can find more. And we're gonna need the food. They'll get fed in them camps."

The window began to come open again. Merle put a finger to his lips and winked at his brother. Darlene stuck her head out. "We almost there?" she asked.

"Turn left at the second gravel road, sugar," Merle told her.

[*]

Ed ate with them at the table this evening, since there was no news to watch. Carol had cooked using his propane camp stove. Maybe she _was_ glad he'd spent all that money on storage food now. And the ammunition. He'd shot six more of those things since lunch.

After dinner, Ed started the generator in the garage. He pulled extension cords underneath the door, through the kitchen, and into the living room so he could recharge his laptop and watch a movie. Carol thought that was a silly waste of power, given that they didn't know how long they'd be without it, but she didn't say anything. Instead, she asked Sophia to pick a board game and set it up on the kitchen table.

Sophia opted for Sorry. She turned over a 2 on her first try and got a playing piece out. Then she drew an 11.

"Lucky," Carol said.

"Mom," Sophia asked, "why are you acting like everything is normal? Almost our entire neighborhood is dead. There are people who used to be dead, and now they're alive again. They're walking around trying to eat people."

What else could Carol do? If she melted down, Ed would get angry. And if she seemed terrified, Sophia would be even more terrified.

"Everything's going to be fine," Carol reassured her daughter. "It's some strange disease, but it hasn't hit me or you or your father. There are other survivors. The military will get things under control. The CDC will make a vaccine. Power will be restored. You'll be back in school in a few months. We just have to hold on until then." Carol turned over a card. "Sorry!" she said cheerfully. She replaced Sophia's green piece with her red one. "Your turn."


	7. Chapter 7

The construction site appeared empty. "Everyone must have gone home from work before the Turn," Marcus said.

"Is that what we're calling it now?" Merle asked. "The Turn?"

"What do you _think_ we should call it?" Marcus spat back.

"I don't know. The Outbreak has a nice ring to it. Or, we could call it the same thing we call the War Between the States." Merle took a step closer, his eyes darkening. "The Recent Unpleasantness."

"You mean the Civil War?" Marcus asked. "Which you assholes lost, by the way?"

"Well the South is risin' now, Chicago boy!" Merle exclaimed. "Because I guarantee you those liberal, manicured, anti-gun Northern city slickers ain't gonna survive this shit."

"Plenty of guns in Illinois," Marcus said. "I shot my first gun when I was fourteen."

"Fourteen!" Merle cried through his laughter. "I was _four._ " Merle drew his eyes slowly away from Marcus and strolled the few steps to his bike, which was parked outside the painting trailer. "See, told you it wouldn't be stolen." He ran his hand over it like he was caressing a woman's thigh.

"Maybe nobody wanted one with swastikas," Marcus remarked in a low voice.

"Ya like those?" Merle asked. "Painted 'em myself."

"Did you know Dixon's actually a Jewish name?" Darlene asked him. "It was shortened at Ellis Island. Original form's Dixonbaumstein."

"What?" Merle asked, looking suddenly alarmed.

"She's shittin' you, Merle," said Daryl as he tried to suppress the smile that was threatening to break out across his face. In the end, one edge of his lips twitched up slightly.

Merle shook his head at Darlene and then straddled his chopper. He made sure the bike was running and did some wheelies around the work trailers. The sound of the engine drew four geeks from throughout the construction site. Merle sputtered his bike to a stop and said, "Whoops."

Daryl shook his head and raised his crossbow at the nearest geek.

"Let me try stabbin' it," Darlene insisted.

Daryl nodded but he kept his bow leveled, in case she needed a rescue. Darlene walked up, grabbed the creature by the arm, and then thrust her new hunting knife in its forehead. It crumpled to the ground while she said, "Ewww! It was real squishy!"

"Don't forget to take yer knife back," Daryl told her. An arrow wooshed from his bow and thunked into the head of the next geek as Darlene slid her knife out of the dead flesh.

"Shit," Merle muttered. "Next two got construction helmets on." He unsheathed his hunting knife. "You take up the rear," he told Daryl.

The Dixon brothers circled and taunted the lurching geeks, Merle brandishing his knife in front while Daryl knocked off their construction helmets form behind. After the geeks were slain, Merle wiped his bloody knife on the tail of his shirt and clipped it back on his belt. He sauntered by Marcus and said, "Nice work, Mr. T."

"Looked like you had it covered," Marcus said. "And who the hell is Mr. T?"

"Jesus, you _are_ young."

They took some gas tanks out of the storage sheds on site and loaded them into the pick-up. Then they sat on the base of an unfinished house, between four rough walls but beneath no roof, and ate a dinner of sunflower seeds, beef jerky, pork rinds, and water. Merle suggested they make camp for the night.

"Already?" Marcus asked. "Let's get a little farther along toward Atlanta first."

"Sun'll start settin' in ten minutes here," Merle insisted. "Shouldn't be travelin' after dark. This place is pretty safe, mostly clear of the geeks. Turn in early, leave early in the morning. I'll even keep first watch." Daryl knew why he volunteered for that. "Hell, we already got two sleepin' bags and a bunch of blankets and pillows in the paintin' trailer."

"Why?" Marcus asked.

"We was between houses," Merle told him.

"Is that like being _between jobs_?"

Merle glowered. "Well we cain't all get full scholarships to college just 'cause we's black."

Marcus stood up. His fist clenched. Merle drew himself to his full height and smirked. Daryl and Darlene scurried into standing positions, ready for a fight to break out.

Darlene put a hand on Marcus's wrist. "He ain't worth it, honey."

"I had a 3.9 in high school," Marcus said. "What did you have?"

"Had about six of the hottest teachers is what I had," Merle said.

Marcus laughed. He caught himself laughing and closed his lips tight, but then the laugh burst out of his closed lips again. "Yeah, you're right, beautiful," he said, putting a hand on the small of Darlene's back. "He ain't worth it. Let's go check out this trailer."

Daryl watched them jump down off the base of the house and head toward the painting trailer. His stomach rolled a little. Too many pork rinds, he told himself, because that was better than admitting he was still uneasy about what they were about to do.

[*]

Carol smoothed Sophia's hair away from her forehead, bent down to kiss the warm flesh, and then pulled the blanket up to her neck. "Ready to say prayers?" she asked.

Ed had told her two years ago that Sophia was "much too old to tuck in," but Carol had kept doing it anyway, when Ed was downstairs watching T.V. and couldn't see. It was one of her small defiances.

"Why is God letting all this happen?" Sophia asked.

"I don't know, sweetie. But we can pray about it." Carol did pray, that their family would be safe, that the power and water would come back on, that the plague would end and the military would destroy those things. "Is there anything you want to pray about?"

"Grandpa," Sophia said softly. "That he's all right. I tried to call, but the phones weren't working."

"Okay," Carol said softly and prayed for Grandpa Peletier. She kissed her daughter's head again. "Remember," she whispered, "we don't talk to daddy about grandpa."

"I know," Sophia assured her.

The large green numbers of the battery-operated alarm clock glowed like a night light on Sophia's nightstand as Carol softly shut her daughter's door.

[*]

Daryl pretended to be asleep as Marcus and Darlene had sex in the corner of the trailer where they'd made a nest. Within two minutes of his final moan, Marcus was snoring. Daryl waited another twenty minutes until he was sure Darlene must be asleep, and then he crept over on his hands and knees near their corner of the trailer and fished the truck keys out of the pocket of Marcus's discarded jeans. He made his way quietly out of the trailer and met Merle, who was supposedly keeping watch near the vehicles.

"Don't want to wake 'em with the sound of my bike," Merle said. "Gonna roll it out a mile south that a way." He pointed down a dirt road. "Then I'll come back and help you roll the pick-up. Then we'll take off."

Daryl nodded. But when Merle was out of sight, he unloaded more than his brother had told him to. He left eight boxes of ammo on the steps leading to the trailer instead of two, three gas cans instead of one, and a fourth of all the water and food.

The gravel crunched lightly under his boots as he walked back to the truck. Daryl was opening the door and getting ready to slide in to wait for Merle when he heard the click of a rifle cocking. "What the hell you think you're doing, Daryl Dixon?"

He sighed and his shoulders drooped. Daryl began to act as if he was going to turn around slowly, but within a second, he had his handgun out of his waistband and the barrel pointed at Darlene's face. "Drop it."

"Who's to say I don't shoot first?" she asked.

"Doubt you's faster than me."

"Fast enough," she said.

"Then we both die. You want that?"

"Do you?" she asked. "Do you really want – Oh shit!" He'd grabbed the rifle right out of her hands with his left hand. "I didn't see that comin'!"

"You got to be more aware, Darlene. 'Specially now that it's just gonna be you and Marcus out there." Now that he'd disarmed her, he slid the handgun back in his waistband. He kept a firm grip on the rifle, but he didn't point it at her.

"You're really gonna steal our shit and run off?" she asked. "You're really gonna do that?"

"Ain't yer shit, Darlene. Truck belongs to Merle in the first place. The rest was Doc's. Now listen, y'all got that rifle in the trailer." He raised Darlene's rifle slightly. "And I'll leave ya this one a half mile up the road. Left ya a bunch of ammo and food and such."

"Yeah, I know. I saw it on the steps. Heard you putting it there. But you're really leaving us without a vehicle?"

"I left ya three gas cans. You saw that white work truck when we's comin' in. I bet you can get it runnin'."

"Daryl, this ain't you. This is Merle's bright idea."

"Merle's right. We cain't go to Atlanta. Ain't nothin' in Atlanta for us. We need this pick-up. And we need the shit in it. That's the way it's got to be."

She shook her head.

"Now you shouldn't be out here alone at night. Get back inside with Marcus."

" _I_ shouldn't be out alone at night, huh?" She put a hand on one hip. "Why not? You're out here alone."

"I'm a man."

She snorted. "No, Daryl, you ain't."

"What the hell's that 'sposed to mean?" He gripped the rifle tighter and his blue eyes flashed in the moonlight.

"Means what it means, Daryl."

"How ain't I a man?"

"Well, for one, you don't know how to have a relationship with a woman."

"Been with _plenty_ of women."

"You've played Merle's wingman. You've entertained his cast-offs. Any of 'em ever come back for more?"

"I ain't a bad fuck, Darlene. They all enjoyed themselves."

"Maybe you ain't a bad fuck, but you ain't never had a _real_ girlfriend. I don't think you've _ever_ connected with a woman. You're afraid of any emotion that ain't anger."

"I ain't a girl. Ain't exactly gonna cry at commercials."

"Ain't just that," Darlene said. "You never held one job for more than ten months straight. And you're like a little puppy, always nipping on the heels of the big dog, always running after your older brother, letting him call the shots, tell you what to do, what to think, how to live your life. You're a follower, Daryl, not a leader, and if you weren't following Merle, you'd be following someone else. You're a sad, little boy who doesn't know how to be a man, 'cause ain't no one ever taught you."

"Fuck you, ya stupid bitch!" Spittle flew from Daryl's mouth as he yelled. "Who are you to talk? How many men you been with 'fore Marcus? And how many does he know 'bout? How many cars you help your daddy steal when you's a teenager, before he got sent up to the pen? Who the fuck do you think you are? Mother fuckin' Theresa?"

"You know who I think I am, Daryl?"

"Who?" he spat.

"Just another fucked-up girl who grew up in those fucked-up mountains, with a bunch of fucked-up neighbors, with a mama who killed herself and a daddy who died in prison. So I do fucked-up things. Just like you! But at least I been _tryin'_. I been _tryin'_ to make something of myself."

"Yeah, well, look where all that tryin' got you, huh? We's all in the same boat now, ain't we? Eat or be eaten."

Darlene took two steps back. "I oughtta hate you for robbin' us, Daryl," she said softly. "But I don't. You break my heart." Her voice cracked on the last word and Daryl felt something he didn't want to feel, something he didn't even know he _could_ feel.

"You go on now," he told her angrily.

"You go on now, too," she said. "You meet up with your brother. Y'all do your thing, like y'all've always done. But I hope for you, Daryl. I do." Her eyes were shiny in the moonlight. His teeth were grinding together, trying to bite down on this unfamiliar feeling, keep it from getting loose. "I hope, one day, maybe things can be different for you, because I knew you when you were just a little boy, before your world crushed you. And I think maybe there's the makings of a man in you, a _real_ man. Maybe this ain't the end of the world. Maybe it's just the end of the world as we know it. Hell, maybe it's a new beginning." She turned and walked back quickly to the work trailer.

He watched her for a while, his teeth clinched, throat swallowing, eyes threatening to fill like a shallow pool. But when she was almost at the stairs, he shook off the unfamiliar feeling, leaped into the truck, and started it. He hit the accelerator hard. The dust rose up, coating the air with a thick cloud and burying her vision in the rearview mirror.


	8. Chapter 8

Merle was ticked off that Daryl had left so much of the food, water, gas, and ammo behind. "There better be a hell of a lot of good shit left at the Wal-Mart," he warned Daryl.

There wasn't. It had been well looted. The Dixon brothers stabbed a couple of geeks in the store and gathered what little was left of use from the remnants strewn all over the floors – a few overlooked packs of batteries, underwear, and some circus peanuts candy. "Ya know it's an apocalypse when yer down to the circus peanuts," Merle said. Then he snagged a portable DVD player.

After the adult store, where Merle grabbed a couple dozen porn DVDs, they hit the liquor store.

"Fuckin' schnapps," Daryl muttered, shinning a flashlight to see what little remained on the shelves. "And mixers."

Merle snagged up a single bottle of vodka that was lying on its side. "Tequila's completely gone," he said as he rounded the corner of the shelf and began strolling down the other side.

"So's the bourbon and whiskey," Daryl said as he rounded a different shelf. "'Cept this one bottle of Southern Comfort."

"Grab it. We'll drink it for Mama." Southern Comfort had been her favorite beverage, second only to box wine.

"What the fuck's Am-a-ret-to?" Daryl asked.

"Some kind of almond-tasting shit," Merle said. "Just take it."

Next, they headed back up in the mountains, but in a different part of the range than where they'd grown up, about twenty-five miles north-east of their own daddy's cabin. They did some vodka shots before sleeping in the truck for a couple of hours. When they awoke, the sun had risen.

They followed a sign marked _Hideaway Cabins_ up a windy, dirt road to locate some remote hunting cabins, spread out over five miles. An occasional geek roamed the road, but they saw no signs of active human life. Merle chose a cabin toward the middle to clear out, because in the open garage, he could see a generator.

There was a single geek rattling around in the cabin, an old man. Daryl stabbed it in the head, dragged the body around back, and burned it. They were going to be staying here for a while, and they didn't want it to draw animals. Or stink.

The cabin was tidy and the living room furniture had a handmade, rustic country look to it. A long wooden dresser in the living room was covered with hunting and camping brochures and rental forms for the cabins. It seemed the property manager had lived here.

"Wood stove," said Merle, nodding to a corner of the room. "We can heat the house and cook shit even when the power goes out."

They walked from the living room to the kitchen - there was no real division between the two - and looked through the cupboards. There was lots of oatmeal and grits, some Cheerios, coffee grounds, canned fruits and vegetables, some jerky, and soups. "This oughta keep us for awhile," Merle said.

Daryl tried the faucet. The water sputtered, looked slightly murky, and then ran clear. "Still workin'."

"Well water, most likely." Merle opened the fridge. "Electricity's out. Either that or the fridge is dead."

Daryl tried a light switch, but nothing came on. "Want me to get that generator runnin'?"

"Not yet. Ain't nothin' worth keeping in this fridge, 'cept the beer, and I'll have that finished by lunch." Merle grabbed a bottle. "Look at that! Fancy shit. Imported." He handed it to Daryl.

"Bass," Daryl read. "Like the fish?"

"It's from England, dumb ass. Just drink it."

Daryl popped the cap off against the counter top and took a swig. "Warm," he said.

"That's how those bastards drink it in England anyway."

Daryl wandered past the living room again, sipped the beer, and peered into the rooms. There were only three. One had a king-size bed, dresser, and wardrobe. The other was a guest room with just a full-size bed and a small dresser. The third bedroom had been converted into a study.

"I get the king bed," Merle said.

"Fine." Daryl ducked into the study and glanced at the photos on the massive oak desk while he drank. There were a bunch of pictures of a little girl, at different ages, from preschool age to about eleven or twelve. She was completely tow-headed as a toddler, but her hair became a darker blonde over time, and a smattering of freckles lined her nose and cheeks.

There was an old fashioned typewriter on the desk, the kind with individual key strokes. It looked like the old man was halfway through typing a letter. It began -

 _Dear Sophia,_

 _I know we've never met in person, that we've only talked on the phone and in letters, but I want you to know you can tell your grandpa anything. I know your daddy doesn't like me. Maybe I gave up on him too easily. I kicked him out of my house when he was just seventeen. I wasn't the best father that way. But I've been trying to be a good grandpa. And your mamma has been real nice to let me call you sometimes and give you my letters._

 _Honey, you sounded real sad the last time we talked on the phone. You said it had "started again." What "started again?" Why wouldn't you tell me? Sweetie, you can tell me anything. I just want you_

And there the letter ended.

There was an old, rotary-style phone on the desk. Daryl picked it up and listened and was surprised to find a dial tone. "Hey!" he called through the open door to Merle, who was sitting on the living room couch and putting batteries in the DVD player. "Think the phone's workin' if ya want to call someone!"

"Who in the hell would I call?" Merle asked.

"Dunno." Daryl put the receiver back in the cradle. He was disturbed by the sudden, strange wish that he _had_ someone to call. He hadn't cared about not having anyone to call when the world was trucking along as usual. Why did he care now? The only phone numbers he even had _memorized_ were his cousin Billy Ray's and that one disposable cell phone Merle had held onto the longest. But Billy Ray was gone now. Merle had stuck a knife in his undead head through the cell bars.

Daryl picked up the phone again. Just out of curiosity, he called 911. He got a busy signal and hung up.

When he got back out to the living room, the sounds of a woman panting and moaning and crying, "Yes! Yes! Harder! Yes!" filled the area. Merle was sitting on the couch before the DVD player. He cinched a band tightly around his arm and tapped at a vein with his fingers. The syringe he'd pulled out of the truck's glove compartment lay on the coffee table. "Want some, little brother?" he asked.

"Nah."

Merle always asked, even though the answer was always no. Daryl had never so much as tried the shit. He'd seen what meth did to Merle and his daddy and other people in the neighborhood, and he'd made a decision not to touch it even once. He'd tried marijuana a couple of times, but he hadn't even liked that. Something about not being in control of himself really bothered him. He _did_ get drunk from time to time, but usually only on social occasions, which was to say, when Merle was buying. But with alcohol, he could take it or leave it. He didn't know why, when his daddy had taken so hard to the bottle and his mama loved her cheap box wine, but Daryl could get drunk one night and then go out camping for a week without a sip and never miss it.

Merle apparently couldn't find a good vein, so he unwound the band and then tried putting it on his other arm.

"Saw some wood and tools in the shed," Daryl said. "Think I'm gonna go out and board up the windows."

"Why?" Merle asked, tapping the inside of his arm hard with two fingers again.

"Well, case a bunch of geeks show up while's we sleepin'. Don't want 'em bustin' in the windows like they did with that glass door at the sheriff's office."

"Only geeks up here are the ones in these cabins, and these cabins are quarter mile apart."

"Better safe than sorry," Daryl said. The truth was, he just needed something to do. And he didn't like watching Merle shoot up. If anything good came out of this damn apocalypse, maybe it would be that Merle would run out of meth and get clean.

Daryl left his brother to his solitary high and went to work, but he found the cabin had external wood shutters, so he just closed all of those and latched them shut with the metal hooks and latches. The cabin had a skylight, so light could still get in. The geeks weren't going to be crawling up on the roof.

He strolled around the cabin and saw a small vegetable garden in back. He plucked a green bean, snapped off the ends liked he'd done with his Nana Dixon when he was a very little boy, before she'd died and Mama had let the garden go to shit. He gobbled it down, and then he snapped and ate a dozen more raw.

[*]

Just as T-Dog had predicted, a herd of creatures from the town began to make its way to the neighborhood. Ed saw the lurching monsters in the far distance while going out to get something from his car.

He burst through the screen door of the house. Carol, who had been crochetting, leaped in her arm chair when the door creaked. "We got to go!" he shouted. "Now! Help me load up!"

Running frantically in and out of the house, they crammed into the trunk clothes, food, water, gasoline containers, MREs, beer, and several boxes of ammo. Carol even grabbed the iron and ironing board and shoved them into the last tiny bit of space.

"What the hell do you need _that_ for?" Ed asked.

"I don't know," she said. She'd been on autopilot, moving in a state of shock. He slammed the trunk shut. "Where's Sophia?"

Carol looked around frantically.

[*]

By the time Daryl came back inside and locked the front door, Merle was already starting to come down from his high. That was one thing about a meth high - it never lasted long. Merle was staring vacantly at the porno. A phone rang, and it was a moment before Daryl realized it was coming from the study and not from the movie.

"I'm hallucinatin', brother!" Merle yelled. "There's a phone ringin'! Wonder if it's God Almighty on the other end of the line." He laughed. "I better pick it up and see what the big man wants!"

"Real phone, Merle," Daryl said. He walked quickly to the study and picked up the receiver. "Hello?" he asked cautiously.

"Grandpa!" came a girl's voice. "Grandpa, it's Sophia. You're still alive?"

"Uhhh…" Daryl did not want to tell this little girl that he'd just driven a knife into the thing that had once been her grandfather and then burned its body.

"Grandpa," the girl was almost whispering now. "My parents are packing. I think we're going to the camps in Atlanta."

"Sophia!" came the loud, angry bark of a male voice. "Get your ass moving! Right now! We got to get the hell out of here!"

"Love you, grandpa," the girl said quickly.

"Goddamnit, Carol!" came the man's voice again. "Why don't you control your daughter? Get her in the car now or you'll be sorry!"

Daryl could hear the girl gasping, and then there was a distant smack, followed by a clunk, as if the phone receiver had been dropped.

"Little girl?" Daryl asked. "Y'all a'ight? Little girl? Hey, little girl?" He thought of that letter in the type writer and wondered if what had "started again" was that girl's daddy beating her mamma, or her, or both of them. He knew his own daddy had sometimes gone months without beating him, insisting it would never happen again. But it always did. At least, it always had until that day, on Daryl's fifteenth birthday, when he beat his daddy right back. After that, they weren't beatings so much as fights, and Daryl left home two years later, before one of those fights could end in patricide.

The phone went dead. Daryl hung up the receiver. He returned to the living room, feeling uneasy about the girl he couldn't help. Merle was slowly passing out on the couch.

[*]

Carol rubbed her cheek where Ed had slapped her. Sophia slid her suitcase into the backseat. The girl hadn't needed to pack it. Carol always made her keep one ready and stored under her bed, in case Ed ever got really out of control and they had to run to a shelter.

The herd was just a few yards from their car now. Ed shot into it with his shotgun, pumping and reloading and pumping and reloading while Carol slammed Sophia's door shut and ran around to the front passenger's seat.

Ed ended up smashing one of those creatures in the head and losing his grip on his shotgun. He left it on the ground and got in the car. Carol was almost hyperventilating by the time he got the keys in the ignition. Those things were crowding around the car now. Three were at Sophia's window. Two were at Ed's, and another was at Carol's. One was trying to claw its way on top of the hood. The engine sputtered on. Ed slammed the accelerator, plowed down the monster in front of them, and thudded over it like a speed bump.

Carol looked into the rear view mirror at the monsters lurching after them. The small houses receded. The neighborhood she'd lived in most of her adult life vanished like a fading dream. Sophia sat in the back seat of the car, her freckled face scrunched up, and struggled not to cry.


	9. Chapter 9

Ed hit a cement road block on the highway twenty miles outside of town. Abandoned cars lay strewn in all directions on the other side of it, and dozens of those undead creatures lurched between them. "Shit!" he muttered, and quickly reversed the sedan, spun it around, and sped back down the road.

They ended up driving all over the place, looking for a side route to pick up the highway further up. Carol wanted to ask if Ed had any idea where he was going, but she didn't dare. He burned through his half- tank of gas and stopped to refill it from one of the four, five-gallon cans he'd brought.

Ed left the empty canister by the side of the road, slammed the trunk shut, and got back in the car, muttering, "Why'd you bring the goddamn ironing board! Ain't got no room in there!"

"Sorry," Carol said, not knowing why she'd done it herself. "You can take it out and leave it."

"Then I'd have to _dig_ it out." He cranked the engine and drove on.

[*]

"Look at the tits on that one!" exclaimed Merle, taking a swig from the Southern Comfort bottle and pointing to the screen of the portable DVD player. He put the bottle down and tossed some trail mix into his mouth.

Daryl looked up from the handgun he was cleaning. The parts were scattered on the coffee table. "Yeah. Nice," he agreed, but he was getting really tired of the porn marathon. It was just the same damn sort of thing over and over. At least whenever Merle decided to jerk off, he took the DVD player back to the bedroom. But the rest of the time he just left it playing constantly on the coffee table, switching out discs here and there, and burning through batteries. Most of the time he watched, Merle was either getting drunk or high.

"Don't like anything smaller than a D, myself," Merle said. "How 'bout you?"

"They's all good," Daryl said as he reassembled his handgun. "Never met a tit I didn't like."

Merle laughed. "Guess beggars can't be choosers."

Daryl stood up and went over to the kitchen, which opened on the living room. He looked in the cupboards again and made a mental inventory. He looked out the window. He'd opened up the shutters to let in the light. There weren't enough geeks around here to worry about. He'd latch them at night, though. "Think I'm gonna go huntin'," he said.

"Why? We ain't near out of food yet."

"Just think I'm gonna go."

Daryl came back four hours later after killing three squirrels and two geeks who had probably been renting one of the several cabins along this ridge. Other than the stray geeks, nothing had changed in the forest, not really. The world might be going to shit, but the wilderness was still the same.

He sat down on the couch next to Merle, whose head was bobbing a little, whether because he was high or drunk, Daryl didn't know.

[*]

Night fell, and the Peletier family ended up sleeping in the car at the side of the road. Thank God it had dropped to sixty-five degrees for the night, though it was probably close to eighty in the car, with the windows rolled up except for a single crack in the window to let in air. Sophia stretched out on the backseat, her feet wedged beneath Ed's leaned back front seat.

They awoke an hour later to Sophia's scream. One of those creatures was growling at her window and sticking its fingers through the sliver of space at top.

Ed grabbed his hand gun from the console, threw open his door, and ran around to shoot it. "Quit your goddamn screaming!" he ordered Sophia when he got back inside the car. More frightened by her father than by the prospect of another monster approaching, the girl fell silent.

Ed drove on, looking for a way back on the highway toward Atlanta. Sophia, mercifully, went back to sleep. Carol's fingers curled around the side of her seat and her eyes darted in all directions for signs of monsters.

Ed dozed off at the wheel for a moment, skidded off the road onto the grassy shoulder, and woke up when Carol grabbed the wheel. The car jerked to a halt as he slammed on the brakes. She let go of the wheel, afraid he'd be angry that she'd taken over. He straightened out the car on the shoulder and clicked it off. "Too damn dark," he said. "We'll figure out how to get back on the highway somewhere tomorrow."

Carol glanced in the back seat. Sophia stirred, but she didn't wake up.

Ed leaned back his seat and closed his eyes. He slept with the loaded hand gun on his lap. Carol didn't sleep at all.

[*]

Merle was passed out again. Daryl wandered into the study to look at the books. He pulled out a biography of Robert E. Lee, sat down in the large leather chair behind the desk, and lit a kerosene lamp he'd found in the cabinet under the kitchen sink.

The book had lots of pictures and captions, and his eyes settled on a copy of one of Lee's letters. Something in the words troubled him: "I have been unable to make up my mind to raise my hand against my native state, my relatives, my children and my home. I have therefore resigned my commission in the Army." For some reason, those damn words made him think of the way he'd turned on and deserted Darlene.

Daryl shut the book with a whap and grabbed the _Shooter's Bible_ instead. He paged through that until his eyes grew heavy. Then he turned the lamp down, lay his head on the desk, and fell asleep.

[*]

Cars honked wildly. They'd found the highway at last, around noon the next day, but after thirty minutes of driving, they hit a traffic jam. The air conditioning in Ed's sedan had stopped working, and they had all the windows rolled down. He turned off the engine, and all three slipped from the car.

Carol tried to share some of their food with another family – a woman name Lori and her son Carl, and a friend of theirs named Shane. But Ed wasn't hearing of it. The boy smiled at Sophia, and Sophia smiled back. Carol's heart cinched at the small kindness.

Carol recognized Shane from the police interview on the television, but she didn't mention the fact. Ed would probably think she was flirting with him. In fact, she avoided looking at Shane as much as possible as they stood waiting and hoping traffic would move again. Still, she felt reassured by his presence, and especially by the badge clipped to his belt and the gun at his hip. Her eyes scanned the highway for any sign of those undead creatures.

"There's no way we're getting to Atlanta," Shane said to Lori. "We need to think about making camp somewhere where these things can't reach. On higher ground."

"We'll go with you," Carol blurted, and Ed narrowed his eyes at her.

But to her surprise, he didn't protest. "Yeah," Ed said. "Higher ground."

"We want to go, too!" a large Hispanic man called from one car over. He had a wife and two children with him. "Too many people. If they start dying and turning…" He shook his head and looked over the sea of cars and people. The man waled over and reached out his hand to Shane. "I'm Morales."

Shane shook. Then he nodded from Morales to Ed. "Let's take our families, turn around, and get out of this mess."

[*]

"Can you believe that?" Merle asked, gesturing to the porno that was currently showing. "Why's that girl got such short hair?"

Daryl dipped his spoon into the bowl of hot grits he'd just made. He'd heated the water in a kettle on the wood stove and added plenty of salt, but it could sure use some butter. "Hell ya care about their hair for, Merle? How can ya even notice that?"

"'Cause I like to pull on it," Merle said, "when I'm fuckin' 'em. Don't know why they'd put a short-haired chick in a porno. Looks butch."

"Looks fine to me."

"That's 'cause ya ain't got no standards, little brother."

Daryl shoveled the rest of the grits in his mouth. He stood and began to meander around the cabin. Eventually, he found himself in the study, where he picked up the phone and listened for the dial tone. Nothing. The receiver clicked when he set it back in its cradle.

He wondered about that little girl, if her daddy had hit her or her mother on the way out the door, if that was the smack he had heard. He wondered if she was in Atlanta by now, or if they'd all been devoured by geeks along the way.

Daryl walked around the study, running his fingertips along the shelves, before returning to the living room. "Think I'm gonna hike down to the stream," he said. "Go fishin'."

"Good idea," Merle replied, opening the bottle of Amaretto. The vodka, beer, and Southern Comfort were all gone by now. "Have us a fish fry tonight. Make sure ya catch us some big 'uns."

Daryl did catch some big ones. He also snooped around some cabins, killed three geeks, and snagged four six packs of beer. That night, after they ate the fish, Daryl joined in the drinking until he passed out on the couch. When he woke up at ten the next morning, with a splitting headache and an unsettled stomach, Merle had the DVD player going again.

[*]

Getting off the highway required some firepower, because those creatures seemed suddenly to appear everywhere. Ed and Shane used up much of their ammo, and Morales bloodied his baseball bat, but they found a park sign and the caravan of three vehicles began to climb a steep hill, away from all the teeming death below.

They found a campsite near a quarry. There were other survivors there already who had given up on making it to Atlanta, about two dozen – men, women, and children. T-Dog and the people he'd rescued in the church van were among them. "Told you Atlanta was a dumb ass idea," Ed muttered to him when they met again.

"Yeah, well," T-Dog replied, "I still got a lot of people out safely."

Ed grunted and walked away. He pitched a tent. They began to build a home among this strange hodge-podge of people – city folk and country folk, old and young, blue collar workers and professionals.

The women cooked and did the laundry, and Carol folded clothes on her "goddamn ironing board." The men patrolled the camp with guns, tinkered with the cars, and tried to hunt but caught very little. The children played. The canned food, bottled water, and MREs began to disappear bit by bit. The days passed in relative safety, with no real plan for the future. They were all just waiting, but waiting for what?

[*]

"Look at that ass!" shouted Merle from the couch.

Daryl was sitting at the kitchen table, tightening the strings of his crossbow after another morning of solitary and unsuccessful deer tracking. "Know what, Merle? I don't _want_ to look at that ass. I don't give a shit about that ass! What the fuck are we doin' up here? Is this what we're gonna do for the rest of our goddamn lives? Watch porn and eat pork rinds and drink warm beer? Is this how we're gonna end it?"

"Well ain't you just a regular party pooper?"

Daryl tossed his crossbow roughly across the kitchen table top. "I'm bored!"

Merle leaned forward and slammed the screen of the portable DVD player down. "Fine. Let's go roamin'. Have us an adventure. Go further south toward Atlanta." He stood up and began to stagger toward his bedroom. "Soon as I take a nap. Hell, maybe we can even find us some pussy. There's got to still be some women survivin' out there somewhere. Bet they'd love a little protection from the Dixon brothers."

"Maybe we should have stuck with Darlene and Marcus." Daryl said it so quietly he didn't think Merle could have heard him, but apparently he did.

"Yeah, maybe yer right, little brother. Bet she'd have let all three of us take turns eventually."

Daryl gritted his teeth. "Ain't what I meant." Through the open door of the bedroom, Daryl watched his brother pass out face down on the bed.

[*]

"Catch anything?" Andrea asked as Dale, Ed, and Shane re-entered the camp. She and Carol were hanging clothes to dry.

Dale shook his head solemnly.

"Walkers must be driving off the game," Ed muttered. Ed had picked up the term _walker_ from some of the people at the camp. Carol thought it was a strange description for these undead creatures, which lurched more than strolled, but she'd started to use it too. Ed walked off, grumbling, toward their tent.

"We'll get something tomorrow," Shane assured the women before walking on himself.

Carol watched Shane stride toward Lori. She thought those two were likely having an affair. It was all in the body language. She wondered what kind of man Lori's husband had been, if she could move on from him so quickly. The boy didn't know though. Carl treated Shane like a fun uncle. In fact, at the moment, Carl was poking the handsome cop playfully with a stick. Shane plucked another stick from the ground and began to sword fight with the boy while Sophia and Eliza Morlaes watched and giggled. Meanwhile, Dale disappeared inside his RV.

Carol handed Andrea a wet shirt. "I hope they catch something soon. We're almost out of MREs."

"If they don't," Andrea told Carol as she clipped the shirt to the line, "Amy and I are going to have to go fishing."

"Do you know how to fish?"

Andrea nodded. "My dad used to take us. I haven't done it in a while, though. I suspect I'm a bit rusty."

Ed emerged shirtless from their tent in the distance and shouted, "Carol! Where the hell's my green shirt? I told you to wash it!"

Andrea looked disdainfully in Ed's direction, and Carol made her apologies. "Sorry," she hastened. "I'll be right back." She scurried off to help her husband find his shirt.

[*]

While Merle was sleeping, Daryl loaded up the pick-up truck. A mangy dog ran out of the woods, past the truck, and up the stairs to the front porch. It barked three times at the door. Daryl wondered if the mutt lived here and, if so, where it had been until now. He took a few steps closer. "You a good huntin' dog?" he asked it. "Bird dog, maybe?" The dog growled at him and then ran back off into the woods.

Daryl shrugged and went back to work. He emptied two of the five-gallon gas cans into the nearly empty tank of the pick-up. Then he took the empty cans, drained the generator they hadn't used, and refilled them. Next he siphoned off the rest of the gas from the old man's Buick to top off Merle's bike.

After that, he went inside and looked around the cabin for anything useful to take, searching every nook and cranny. That was when he found the hand-cranked radio. Daryl took it to the kitchen table and turned the lever round and round until he heard Trace Adkins singing:

 _She grew up in the city in a little subdivision_  
 _Her daddy wore a tie, mama never fried a chicken..._

Darlene was right. That one station just kept playing the same song on an endless loop. He turned the knob through some static and stopped when he heard the loud buzz of the early warning system. It was followed with a recorded voice saying, "All survivors should head toward Atlanta. The city is under military control. Refugee camps have been established." Then there was the buzz again, followed by the same recording.

Daryl kept tuning and finding only static until he worked his way back to the first station again:

 _...They raised her up a lady, but there's one thing  
They couldn't avoid -  
Ladies love country boys..._

Daryl clicked off the radio, walked into the living room, slumped down on the couch, and stared at Merle's last bag of meth on the coffee table. It was a big bag, and had likely been evidence in a major case. It would last Merle a long while.

Without really thinking, Daryl found himself fingering the smooth wood of his pocket knife. He slid it out of the pocket of his pants and pried the blade open. A puff of air escaped when the knife drove into the plastic bag. Daryl tore a jagged line down the front, and then he did it again and again before taking the bag and leaving a very light trail of crystal powder over the floorboards toward the front door of the cabin, over the porch, and down the stairs to a spot near the pick-up truck.

Next, he held the bag closed in two hands, so it wouldn't spill over, backtracked to the porch, crawled underneath it, and dumped the rest of the contents, which he buried beneath the dirt. The empty, torn bag he left near the pick-up truck where the trail ended. Daryl wrapped one corner around a rock so the bag wouldn't blow away. He'd tell his brother he left the front door ajar by mistake and the dog had wandered in, grabbed the bag, and dragged it off. The dog's tracks were already all over the porch and in the dirt near the truck anyway.

After that, Daryl wandered around the cabin listlessly for a while and then walked out onto the back porch, where he slid into the old man's rocking chair. He looked out over the trees growing high along the hills and breathed in the piney scent. Then he fished a cigarette out of his front pocket and lit up. As he exhaled, the smoke curled out over the porch rail, drifted up toward the clear blue sky, and vanished like the past.


	10. Chapter 10

Merle was predictably pissed off about the meth. "Gonna hunt that dog down and slit its throat."

"Forget the damn thing," Daryl replied. "Likely died of an overdose anyhow."

On the way down the windy, mountain road to the valley below, Merle made Daryl stop at each cabin to search for drugs. Now, Merle kicked over a coffee table in a violent rage, screaming, "What the fuck? Are these vacation cabins for rich people? Hobby hunters and their spoiled families?"

Daryl knew what he meant. The cabins were so strangely _tidy._ The Dixon brothers might find a six-pack of beer or a bottle of wine or even some scotch (all of which they'd taken), but they weren't coming across any cheap liquor or drugs. This was nothing like the part of the mountain range where they'd grown up.

At the next cabin, Merle kicked in the locked door with a booted heel. Daryl stormed in, crossbow leveled and ready to shoot geeks. He'd just about pulled the trigger when he realized the family of four standing before him were human. He immediately removed his finger from the trigger, though he remained poised, crossbow steady and aimed, because the father was now leveling a shotgun at him.

The kids, two girls who appeared to be about nine and eleven, screamed their heads off, in high pitch squeals that burned Daryl's ears, until their mother put a hand over each of their mouths.

Merle sauntered in, rifle held loosely in one hand, and gave the mother an appreciative once over. "Well hello, darlin'," he said. "Your man takin' good care of you? Satisfyin' _all_ your needs?"

The woman gathered her children closer against her sides like a mother hen sweeping her chicks under her wings. The father stepped sideways to stand in front of all three.

"Cut it out, Merle," Daryl muttered, still holding his crossbow on the father because the father was still holding his shotgun on him. "Yer scarin' 'em."

"Well they oughta be scared," Merle said. "If that man was _not_ scared," he pointed a finger at the father, "he'd have blown your head off by now."

"We don't mean ya no harm," Daryl told the family. "Thought you was geeks in here."

"Geeks?" the man asked.

"Monsters, geeks, the livin' dead, whatever you want to call the fuckers," Merle said. "You got any drugs?"

"Take whatever you need. Just don't hurt my family." The shotgun trembled in the man's hand. Merle strolled forward, and the man's grip grew tighter. "Come too close to my girls and I _will_ shoot you."

"You don't want to do that," Merle said casually. "Then my brother'll have to shoot you with his crossbow and then where will we be?" Merle looked at the kids and pouted. "With a couple of poor little fatherless girls."

The girls buried their faces in their mother's skirt.

"Nobody wants that." Merle strolled around the cabin, surveying its contents. "Tell you what. We'll take this Blanton's right here." He picked up the bourbon that was resting on an end table. The bottle was three quarters full. "Because I like the little horsey on top. And then we'll call it a deal. Fair enough?"

The man swallowed and nodded.

"Though I sure could use some smokes. Couldn't you, Daryl?"

"Wouldn't mind an extra pack," Daryl said, hoping the agreement would hurry Merle along.

"I don't have any cigarettes," the man said. "But there are some cigars in the drawer in that end table right there." He nodded to the end table. Merle retrieved four cigars and tucked them into his front pocket.

Daryl took a step backward. "C'mon, Merle. Let's go."

Merle dragged his eyes over the woman one last time before sauntering out the front door. Daryl told the family, "There's refugee camps in Atlanta, if'n ya decided to leave. Might actually be safer up here, though, where there ain't so many of 'em."

Daryl backed slowly out of the cabin with the man still in his crosshairs. Once on the porch, he shut the door and ran for the truck. Merle already had his motorcycle purring. A shotgun blast blew right through the front door.

"Dumb ass," Merle shouted just before he revved off.

Daryl followed, swerving the truck to avoid getting his tires shot out by the man who had now emerged on the porch and was firing in his direction.

The Dixon brothers flew down the mountain without stopping at anymore cabins.

They took less traveled, smaller roads once they reached the valley, avoiding the wreckage on the interstate. At night, to get away from the geeks on the road, they drove a bit into the woods, as far as they could get with the truck, hiked a little farther, and set up camp. The bourbon calmed Merle, who was still craving meth, enough that he fell asleep.

Once Merle was passed out, Daryl stuck his nose to the bottle of Blanton's and breathed in citrus and oak. He was used to cheap whiskey, and the complexity of the bourbon intrigued him. After sipping, he rolled the liquid slowly on his tongue and thought he tasted a hint of caramel. He wished he could be sharing this with his cousin Billy Ray, down at the tavern in the shadow of the mountain peak on which he'd grown up.

For some reason, Daryl couldn't stop thinking about the words Darlene had said to him when he'd left her on that construction site. It made him angry, but it also made him feel ashamed. He didn't want to admit to himself that there might be any truth to her words.

He looked at Merle, snoring softly on his back atop a sleeping bag. Maybe he did follow his brother like a puppy on the heels of the big dog, but what the hell else was he supposed to do? Merle was all he had. Merle was all he'd _ever_ had. His mother had left him in that fire, and his father had driven him away. But Merle...Merle had come back.

After the Army, Merle had come back for Daryl, got him out of their father's house, and Merle had never left again. There was no one else in this world Daryl could trust to have his back, especially now, with everything going to shit. Merle had survived their father's house, he'd survived juvie, he'd survived war, and he would survive this, too. He'd make sure Daryl survived it. Merle was blood, and blood was thicker than thick.

Daryl finished off the rest of the bourbon. It was only enough to give him a very slight buzz. He strung up a warning system using empty cans he'd found littered in the woods and a ball of twine he'd packed, in case any geeks wandered this way, and then he settled down to sleep beside his brother.

[*]

Merle was shaking and sweating the next morning. He kept talking about how dry his mouth was. He was having wild mood swings, too. He wasn't usually this bad when he had to go without the meth, but he'd been binging and crashing for days straight in that cabin. The withdrawal was much more severe this time.

After they hiked back out to where they left the truck and bike, Merle grabbed Daryl by the neck of his shirt, balled the sweat-stained cloth into his fist, and slammed him hard against the side of the pick-up. "A dog?" he shouted. "You sure 'bout that? You goddamn sure, little brother?"

Daryl angrily shook Merle off and stepped toward the front door of the truck.

Merle grabbed him by the back of the neck this time and pushed him forward, slamming his cheek down against the hood. Daryl tried to push himself up with the palms of his hands against the hot metal of the hood, but Merle was too strong. "Get the fuck off me!" he yelled.

Merle stumbled back. When Daryl turned around, Merle had his fists up and was bouncing on his feet like a boxer. "Did you fuckin' pour out my meth? Did you, Daryl?"

"Course not!" Daryl rubbed his cheek. "That's just the paranoia, man. From the withdrawal. You know that happens."

To Daryl's surprise, Merle put down his fists. His mood changed suddenly. "Yeah. Reckon so. Sorry." Merle swept Daryl up into a great big bear hug, patted his back, and planted a sloppy kiss on the top of his head.

Confused, Daryl pushed him off. He couldn't remember the last time Merle had outright hugged him. Maybe when he was five, before he'd learned to swim well, and Merle, panicked, had pulled him half dead out of that river he'd fallen into.

Merle stepped back. "Let's hit the road."

"Yeah," Daryl said, eyeing him warily before climbing into the truck.

[*]

Merle got better after that, though he kept looking for meth here and there. They were about twenty-five miles outside of Atlanta, camping on a high hill, when they spied the billowing, black clouds of smoke rising up from the city on the far horizon.

"Guess there ain't no point in anyone goin' to Atlanta after all," Merle said.

Daryl's eyes swept the scene. "That's a hell of a lot of smoke. Think it's on fire?"

"Not anymore," Merle said. "Hell, maybe the military bombed the hell out of the place."

"Why?" Daryl asked.

"Stop the spread. Bet it broke out like crazy in those damn camps. People turnin' into geeks left and right. Told you Atlanta was a dumb ass idea."

Daryl took a step closer on the ledge and watched the smoke floating above the tall buildings. He wondered if Darlene was there, or rather her body, charred beyond recognition. He wonder, too, about that little girl who had called him on the phone, thinking he was her granddaddy. Was her burnt body there, beneath a pile of strangers? How many had perished in those flames? What was left of the world as they had once known it?

[*]

The Dixon brothers drove on. They picked up a minor highway about eight miles from the city. After a mile, Daryl tapped the horn of the truck once to alert Merle before pulling over to the side of the road. Merle leaned toward the ground on his motorcycle as he made a quick U-turn and headed back.

Daryl jumped down from the cab of the pick-up and slammed the door shut. "Gotta take a piss." He slid his handgun into his waistband at the small of his back, just in case he should need it, though this strip of road looked geek-free. There were only three abandoned cars in view.

Merle grabbed one of the empty gas cans from the bed of the pick-up. "See what I can get while we's stopped." He strolled up the roadway.

Meanwhile, Daryl wandered over to the grassy shoulder and began a long, soothing piss. His eyes were closed as the stream flowed, and he was just finishing up when he felt a round circle of metal press against his temple. "Well if it ain't Daryl Dixon. Long time no see."

Daryl's eyes flew open and he was about to reach around back for his handgun when he felt it tugged from his waistband. Darlene was holding her rifle on him, so she couldn't have been the one who grabbed it. "Hands up," came a young male voice from behind him. Daryl raised his hands above his head.

Out of the corner of his eye, Daryl watched a fair-skinned, red-headed teenage boy circle around him. Once the boy was in front, he stretched out Daryl's own handgun until the barrel was about ten inches away and pointed right between Daryl's eyes. The kid couldn't be more than sixteen, but he held the gun steadily and with a disciplined grip.

"You want to put that snake back in your pants?" Darlene asked.

"Gonna put my hands down for a sec," Daryl warned the teenager before he tucked himself in and zipped up.

"Hands back up," the boy ordered.

Daryl complied. "What happened to Marcus?"

"Marcus is just fine," Darlene told him. "Marcus has his rifle to the back of Merle's head right now."

"Where the hell y'all come from?"

"We were headin' back from Atlanta," Darlene said. "Stopped to take a piss ourselves. Heard Merle's chopper roarin' this way. So we all lay low in the gully on the other shoulder. Now turn around. Real slow."

Daryl obeyed. He saw Merle kneeling by the gas tank of a car, grimacing with anger, his hands up, and Marcus's rifle pressed against the back of his shaved head. There was a strawberry blonde girl beside Marcus, maybe eighteen or nineteen, holding Merle's handgun.

"What ya find in Atlanta?" Daryl asked.

"These two new friends," Darlene said. "A nice luxury sedan to drive." She nodded to one of the cars they had assumed was abandoned. "A hell of a lot of geeks. Some dead, some walkin'. Piles and piles of charred bodies. Ash and tanks."

"Where ya headed now?" Daryl asked. He was hoping if they talked long enough, he could get the drop on her, but that didn't seem likely, with two guns trained on him and two on Merle.

"We're backtrackin' to get to the interstate now, and then we're headin' north to Chicago. We're gonna look for his mama and sister and see what's what up north."

"Really think you stand a chance of gettin' that far?" Daryl asked.

"Reckon we'll find out," she answered. "Keys to the truck. Now."

"Let me get some things out it first."

"Why should I?" she asked.

"Hell, left you with a lot of shit." Daryl said it partly to talk her into leaving them with something and partly to quiet the voice of his own conscience, which kept reminding him what he'd done.

"I'll toss out your crossbow once we start drivin'. And Merle's handgun."

"What about _my_ handgun?" Daryl asked.

"I'm keeping it," the teenage boy said. He sounded like maybe his voice was still changing. He tightening his grip on Daryl's handgun. "I like it. I like the Sig. My dad had one. Went down firing it, and I couldn't get it back."

"Y'all can also keep the huntin' knives on your belts," Darlene told him. "But we're takin' everythin' else."

" _All_ three rifles?" Daryl asked. "Y'all already got two."

Darlene sighed. "Guess I can toss ya _one_. But the kids need rifles. We're keepin' the other two."

"And all that ammo?" Daryl asked.

"Leave ya one box of each," Darlene said.

"I left ya eight."

"Payback's a bitch, ain't it?" she asked. "But, hell, Daryl, I'm at least leavin' you a vehicle. We ain't takin' Merle's bike. Marcus sure as hell don't want to ride that racist crotch rocket."

"What about the gas cans?" Daryl asked. "We still got two full ones in the pick-up."

"Y'all just gonna have to siphon it when you need it."

"And the food and water?"

"You know how to hunt, Daryl."

Daryl caught her eyes with his. "Glad yer alive, Darlene. I's afraid ya might of been burned up in Atlanta."

Darlene backed up a little. "I'm glad you're alive, too," she said. "Now toss me the goddamn keys."

[*]

The teenagers took off first, in the luxury sedan. Darlene kept her rifle trained on the Dixon brothers from the bed of the pick-up as Marcus drove off. When they were a few yards down the road, she tossed out Daryl's crossbow, Merle's handgun, one rifle, and Daryl's backpack.

They ran to gather the things. Merle tried shooting at the tires of the truck once he had his rifle back, but it was much too far away by then.

"Cut it out!" Daryl yelled. "Wastin' ammo."

As they walked back to the motorcycle, Merle examined his rifle and handgun. "Shit. They's all scratched up now!"

Daryl rifled through the backpack, which was much lighter than he'd left it. "Bitch took all my cigarettes."

"What's left in there?"

"Box of .223," Daryl said, "and one of 9 millimeter. Four water bottles. Five protein bars. The nasty ones. Blueberry."

"She take all the chocolate ones?"

"Yep. And the trail mix." Daryl slung the pack on his left shoulder. The crossbow was on his right.

"Binoculars still in there?" Merle asked.

"Yeah, why?"

"Cause I saw smoke risin' up over that quarry to the west. Like a campfire." He pointed in the distance.

"Let's get up a bit higher," Daryl suggested. "Hide the bike. Hike in. Check it out."

Merle saddled his chopper. "Hop on, honey bear."

Daryl shook his head. "Ain't ridin' behind ya like a girl."

The bike revved to life. "This is the only transport we got, brother, so cozy up."

Daryl frowned and slid on the back of the bike, but he left his hands on his knees.

"Don't get fresh with me," Merle warned, and then he shot forward. In half a mile, he turned his bike off the highway, roared over the frontage road, and headed up a narrow dirt path on a hill that overlooked the quarry.

As the wind whipped through Daryl's short hair, he watched the smoke curl and dance above the quarry and wondered what sort of people they would encounter there. An inexplicable sense of expectation tingled from his head to his toes. He thought of what Darlene had said back at that construction site: "Maybe this ain't the end of the world. Hell, maybe it's a new beginning."

 **THE END**


End file.
